


Trio

by Trinket2018



Series: The Unspoken Directive [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action/Adventure, Attempted Murder, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Gen, Humor, Kidnapping, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Slash, Quantum Mirror, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 01:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13625661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinket2018/pseuds/Trinket2018
Summary: More visitors through the Quantum Mirror. Three Daniels, no waiting…





	Trio

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of the ‘Unspoken Directive’. (Continued in ‘Ghost’ and ‘Hero’.) No sex (dammit, but I’m just starting) but lots of UST. I mess with Daniel’s already trauma-ridden childhood. Some Daniel-whumping. DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1, the characters and universe are the property of Kawoosh Productions, Showtime/Viacom, Sony/MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions and the Sci-Fi Channel. No copyright infringement is intended. I have absolutely no right to be playing with them or their universe. I just gotta. I promise to get nothing out of it but personal satisfaction. CATEGORY: Adventure, AU, Humor, Pre-Slash. RATING: NC-17 for profanity, violence & consensual m/m. SPOILERS: Set early 5th Season, pre-5-21-Meridian (where Daniel dies/ascends). Reference to episode 1-19-‘There But for the Grace of God’, & 3-6-‘Point of View’. WARNINGS: Mention of past child abuse. (Daniel’s experiences in foster care are not canon, but can be inferred). Violence. Minor character death.

Å 

Dr. Daniel Jackson, eminent archeologist, best-selling author, scholar and world’s leading Egyptologist, waited for the applause of the packed hall to die down (along with the sighs of the many students in the front seven rows – not all of them female) before taking a question from the audience. 

“Dr. Jackson, in all your studies and discoveries, have you ever found evidence that the pyramids of Egypt might have been built by, or at least influenced by, extra-terrestrials?”

Dr. Jackson straightened, his expression forbidding. “Never.”

“Not once? But sir—“

“Never. Not even once. The very suggestion is ludicrous. There is growing evidence that some of the monuments of the Nile Valley are far older than we at first thought, some as much as ten thousand years old. But that does not mean that humans could not have constructed them. Despite the evidence in this room, the human species is intelligent and resourceful. There’s no need to drag aliens into the discussion to explain perfectly simple building techniques.”

“But sir, what about your theories regarding cross-pollenization of cultures? How do you account for the similarities world-wide of such things as pyramid building, calendars—“

“What do aliens have to do with that? Ancient does not mean stupid. Parallel development could explain a lot. Or it could have happened any number of ways through actual contact, as I outlined in my last book. My God, even Thor Hyerdaal’s expeditions more than forty years ago prove the possibility of travel between the continents in Nile reed boats, Polynesian catamarans, and other vessels, by ancient peoples who were masters of their own creations. 

”Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a plane to catch for Cairo. Good day.”

He left the podium and the stage, picking up his overnight bag from one of the young and pretty co-eds who had appointed herself his minion for the duration of his visit on this last leg of his university lecture tour. She might have appointed herself more, if Dr. Jackson had shown himself inclined. But he had strict personal rules about one-night stands with horny students who might brag the next day. He strode out for the sidewalk, easily out-distancing or elbowing aside the many people trying to collar him for more questions. But just as he waved for a taxi, two military men in Air Force uniforms stopped him.

“Dr. Daniel Jackson? Will you come with us, please?”

“Come with you where? Why? Look, I’m due to catch a plane for—“

“Cairo. Yes sir. We’ll see you get there in due course. But we need you to come with us now.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You can’t, sir. It’s a matter of national security.”

“What on Earth could an archeologist have to do with national security?”

“I wouldn’t know that, sir. Come along, please.” 

Dr. Jackson was given no opportunity to object, resist, or question. He tried to interrogate his successive teams of guards as he was passed from car to helicopter, helicopter to jeep, jeep to plane… to no avail. They probably didn’t know anything anyway. Just following orders. And in spite of his temper, he began to be curious. What *did* an archeologist have to do with national security?

He was vaguely aware that the Air Force jet was taking him north and west, up against the ramparts of the Rocky Mountains. Then they landed on a non-descript military air-base without even a sign to tell him where he might be, and a new pair of uniforms loaded him into a black sedan. They drove away from any sign of civilization, until a winding gravel mountain road came to a paved section, a high fence with an armed guard-post, and on the other side, a tunnel into the mountain ahead.

The car stopped, everyone got out, and he was led down featureless corridors of gun-metal gray to an elevator equally featureless. His escort punched a button, and they descended, a long way. Then he was passed to yet another anonymous airman, and they rode down another long way. When the doors finally slid open, an attractive blond woman, vaguely familiar, in casual clothes but no military insignia, stepped forward. She examined him closely, but not with the usual prurient interest he was used to from the opposite sex, and occasionally his own. This was something else, as if she was measuring him in some way.

“Dr. Jackson. Welcome to the SGA. I’m Dr. Samantha O’Neill, chief of science. I don’t know if you were briefed on the way here?”

“Dr. O’Neill, I was not told one damn thing. Why was I kidnapped practically off the street and dragged here – wherever here is?”

The woman held up her hands. “I know it must seem high-handed, but national security – perhaps even world security – is at stake. You’ll be required to sign confidentiality agreements before you leave to guarantee secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. You cannot reveal anything you see, hear or learn while you are here.”

“Easily done. No one would believe it anyway. Now will you tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Come with me, please. We started the briefing without you – we couldn’t wait.”

She led him to a conference room with a large oblong table of dark wood. Two men in Air Force officer uniforms were seated, along with a woman in medical whites. He was introduced to General Hammond, in command of the SGA (no one ventured to explain what the acronym meant), Colonel O’Neill (a silver-haired career man with a hostile glare at the soft white hand that steered him by the elbow to a chair at the table; evidently husband of the luscious Doctor Samantha) and Dr. Fraiser, Chief of Medicine. When everyone was seated again, they all stared at him as the woman had done, eyebrows shooting straight up.

“Wait a minute,” he announced suddenly as the penny finally dropped. “Dr. Samantha Carter, wasn’t it, when we met last? You were tagging after Catherine Langford.” He said the name in a sneer. “I think I already told you, and Dr. Langford, that I have no interest in any little translation project for the military. I have enough work, and it pays a lot better than the government. In fact, I should be on my way to Cairo right now.”

Dr. O’Neill’s mouth twisted as she glanced at the others. “This is our Dr. Jackson, all right. Rude and arrogant little beast as ever.”

And then, even more bewildering, everyone began to look still more concerned and grave.

General Hammond turned to Dr. O’Neill and said, “Is there any chance our ‘guest’ could be telling the truth?”

For a moment, Dr. Jackson thought they meant him, and was about to protest, when Dr. O’Neill replied.

“We tried the co-ordinates he gave us, sir. There’s no active gate there now. But long range telemetry just confirmed two large unidentified objects approaching past Jupiter at incredible speed.”

“What is this?” Dr. Jackson demanded. He was totally ignored, which did not improve his temper. He wasn’t used to being ignored. Respected, venerated, idolized, often feared, but certainly not treated like a shadow in the room. Not for a very, very long time now… and resurrection of those childhood memories did absolutely nothing for his mood. But it did shut his mouth and narrow his eyes as he concentrated on analyzing whatever bizarre situation had engulfed him. 

Hammond spoke to the airman at the door. “Bring him in.”

Two more airmen came in, flanking a third man. 

For once, the great Dr. Daniel Jackson was struck dumb.

The man who had just come in was… him.

No, not him. Not in those charred and filthy rags. Not with that unfashionably long student-radical hair, and a scraggly two-week growth of beard. Not wearing those big horn-rim glasses (he’d had corrective laser surgery on his vision years ago) with the geek-prerequisite strip of adhesive holding them together. And certainly not with that air of frenzied desperation. 

The new-comer took a lightning glance around the room, lingering a moment on Colonel O’Neill, then on to spot Dr. Jackson.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “I’m here…” He checked his watch. “Oh great. It’s already been thirty-six hours. Jack, General, Sam, please, we haven’t got much time. Did you try the address I gave you?”

Dr. O’Neill nodded. “There’s no active gate.”

“Then the attack fleet is already on its way. It’s too late to fight them now. Your only hope is to start evacuating as many people as you can. But you have to start now, before the Goa’uld dial an incoming worm-hole. They’ll lock up your gate for as long as they can to trap you all here.”

The Colonel demanded, “How do you know all this?”

The other Daniel Jackson began to laugh. It sounded distastefully hysterical to Dr. Jackson. “How do I know? Because I’ve seen it before! My God, I’ve seen it so many times before… they start with Egypt. They always start with Egypt, and they destroy everything in their path. In three days, more than half the population of the Earth will be dead. Almost always, the other versions of me are dead by then. You think they don’t know where you are, and you think you have time to send bombs through to Goa’uld-held worlds. But you only have so many windows of opportunity, and almost always you waste them. And only a few get to the Beta site. And it isn’t enough, not when that planet’s winter comes. And when the Goa’uld ha’tak mother-ship lands on this mountain, they take over the base in less than an hour. Sometimes, somebody sets the self-destruct, and you take the first prime of Apophis with you, but that’s cold comfort. Because no matter how the last defense of the mountain plays out, everyone on this world dies, or is enslaved. Everyone.”

Dr. Jackson gave his alter ego a speculative look. “Except you, apparently.”

It was a telling comment. The other Daniel went white. “Yes. I escape. To try and warn an Earth that will listen in time to save itself. But there aren’t that many left that haven’t been destroyed or over-run by the Goa’uld. I haven’t got much time here before entropic cascade failure begins, and neither do you. Open the gate and keep it open as long as you can. It’s the only chance you have now.”

Another airman came in, approached General Hammond, and whispered a message in his ear. He looked around the table, and said, “This briefing is over. Dr’s Jackson, you will be taken to a VIP suite to wait while we decide what to do with you.”

“Wait!” Dr. Jackson – the real one, or at least the sane one – protested. “I’m supposed to be on a plane to Cairo right now. I can't wait here!"

The other Daniel laughed. It wasn’t a cheerful sound. “Believe me, Dr. Jackson, you don’t want to be in Cairo. You really don’t. Not that it makes much difference now.” 

But the pathetic young man in the ragged clothes with dirty-blonde hair falling over his glasses had one more appeal. “Jack! Please. Listen.” He reached a hand out to the Air Force Colonel, his dark blue eyes open wide. “Jack, you’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to. You have to open the Gate to the Beta site, and get everyone out you can. Including yourself. You can’t save Earth or the Mountain, not now. You’ll die if you try. Again.”

The Colonel stared at the young man strangely, just looking at the hand, the attitude… so did the others. But Dr. Jackson wondered if any of them saw what he did. Only part of his alter ego’s appeal had to do with whatever crisis was currently under discussion. Dr. Jackson felt a shiver work up his spine. This Daniel had some kind of relationship going with the hard-as-nails, spit-and-polish, straight-as-a-die Colonel, or thought he did, or thought he might. But it was just as obvious to Dr. Jackson that if the Colonel had a breath of a suspicion of it, he was pretending not to. It was a damn good act.

“We’ll take it under advisement,” Colonel O’Neill replied coolly, keeping a distance the width of the Grand Canyon between himself and the strange, half-crazed other Jackson. “For now, go with the airman. Both of you.”

Half a useless, pointless, wasted hour later, Dr. Jackson paced up and down the drab windowless “guest” quarters, although it had more in common with a prison cell, decorated in classic military gray. His mood was worsening by the moment. The “other one”, the only thing he could think to call this… impostor, sat on the bed, staring wearily and hopelessly at the wall.

“What the hell was that all about, anyway?” Dr. Jackson demanded. “Alien attacks and gates and escape plans… and who the hell are you?”

“I’m you. The you that might have been if something had gone just a little different.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Anything. Could have been anything. Big, small…” The other one glanced back at him and gave a twisted smile. “Okay, it must have been something big. Maybe your parents survived the accident when you were eight.”

That sent a cold chill down Dr. Jackson’s back. “No. They didn’t.”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. Could have been anything. Every decision we make, every event, might have any number of different out-comes. Different decisions, different forks in the road, different roads into different futures.”

“But you’re here in this one.”

“We found an alien device on a planet designated P3X233. A mirror. Turn it on, and you have a window into alternate realities. The way things really did go for the you who is someone else. Touch it, and you can cross over. My reality blew up around me because I couldn’t get anyone to listen when there was still a chance to save ourselves. So now I’m trying to save one Earth. Just one. Any one.”

Dr. Jackson shook his head. “You really think this is all true, don’t you? Alien devices on alien worlds and alien invaders coming to destroy us. What I don’t get is why the Air Force is even willing to take you seriously!”

The “other one” turned to smile at Dr. Jackson. “You remember that little translation job Catherine Langford offered you?”

Dr. Jackson made a noise.

“Yes, well, this is it. How would you translate the word chappa’ai?”

“Chappa’ai… Budge made that ‘Doorway to Heaven’, but he got it wrong, of course. It should be ‘Star Gate’.”

“Stargate. About one hundred yards away and two levels down is a room with a big round ring of a strange mineral with symbols on it that aren’t hieroglyphs or hieratic or cuneiform, but glyphs representing constellations. And if you dial a series of glyphs in the right order, the device opens a worm-hole that leads to matching devices on other planets. The Stargate. I opened the ring in my reality. This Catherine and Sam took a little longer to figure theirs out without you, which is why this Earth has lasted a little longer than some. But you’ve got three days left. I’ve got a little less than that. Unless I get back to the Quantum Mirror, and try to find another Earth that hasn’t been destroyed yet.”

Dr. Jackson shook his head at the ceiling. “Why am I talking to a crazy person? Why do you have less time than Earth does?”

“Sam – all the Sams – call it entropic cascade failure. It’s because there’s two of us in one reality at the same time. Not supposed to happen. You’ve got priority in this one, and after about forty-eight hours, I will begin to experience tremors that will grow worse and worse until one of us leaves. One way or another. Most of the time it isn’t a problem. On most of the Earths, if you’re alive at all, you’re in Egypt when the first attacks come. And I think I said, the Goa’uld always hit Egypt first.”

“Mm. Yes, well, you said a lot of things. So… what’s with you and the starched-up Colonel?”

“What do you mean.”

“Come on. If what you’re saying is true – and that’s a big if – somewhere, somehow, you and I are the same person at some level. You looked at him in the briefing like he was the last life-preserver on the Titanic. I *am* an archeologist. I know when I’m looking at history.”

Daniel shook his head, looking more morose than ever. “Not with this one, apparently.”

“Well, no. Obviously. He’s married to the adorable Doctor Samantha.”

“So was mine.”

“Pardon me?”

“So was my Jack. Married to Sam. But that didn’t… Never mind.”

At least the pathetic fellow didn’t seem violent, Dr. Jackson reflected, trying not to think too much about the actual details of his story. He refused to admit they might make sense, or that he might be starting to buy into any of it. Or that certain elements had the ring of internal consistency, and truth.

At which point the base alarms went off. People began running, there was shouting, and what little Dr. Jackson could overhear made his blood turn cold. And Dr. Jackson, ever a survivor, realized it was time to adjust his world-view if he meant to be alive in three more days.

“Your mirror is on another planet?”

“Yes.”

“You can get there through the… Stargate?”

“Yes.”

“You know how to work it? The Stargate I mean.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then I think we had better come up with a plan, don’t you?”

Å 

The two men stood at the window of the fancy lingerie shop, looking up at the scantily clad mannequin in the window. 

“Now that I have seen the items, I must concur with your opinion, Danieljackson. These would not be an appropriate birthday gift for Major Carter,” commented the larger of the pair. The Chicago Cubs baseball cap on his head hid a large gold badge seared into the middle of his forehead.

His companion considered the scrap of royal blue silk. “No… Not really. Not military issue. I don’t think anything in that store comes in khaki.” 

“On many worlds, giving such a gift to a woman not your wife would either carry an automatic death sentence, or constitute a proposal of marriage.” 

“Well, there’s no law against it in the United States, but there’s a time and a place for a present like that, and this isn’t it.”

“Why did O’Neill suggest this as a gift, then?”

“Probably because Jack doesn’t have the nerve to get something like this for her himself.”

The man in the ball cap thought about it a moment longer, and then said, “I believe Major Carter would look extremely attractive in that garment. Extremely.”

“Yes, she would,” the other agreed, considering the silk and lace teddy seriously. “No doubt about it. I think that color would be good on her. It’s the same shade as the dress the Shavadai put her in, right?” 

“I believe so. It greatly enhanced the color of her eyes.”

Dr. Daniel Jackson glanced at his friend and shook his head. “Don’t do it, Teal’c. Trust me on this. This is not the way to spring the truth on Sam.”

Teal’c lifted one expressive eyebrow. It was about the only expressive element on his face, and he used it judiciously, sparingly. “I do not know what you mean, Danieljackson.” 

“We’ve had this discussion before, Teal’c. Just tell her how you feel about her and get it over with, okay? But don’t pull it on her like this. If she opens that at the party Friday night, with everyone from General Hammond to Ernie the janitor, not to mention her own father, all looking on… she will be embarrassed, and you’ll have blown it, big-time. And she’ll probably shoot me for letting you do it.” Daniel was certain he knew where she’d aim, too. South of the belt and north of the knees. “I don’t know about you, Teal’c, but I’ve logged way too much time in the Infirmary this year already. There are only so many sponge baths a man can stand. And Janet’s staff seem to have this thing about taking temperatures the hard way.”

“I have noted this, Danieljackson,” Teal’c said with a fatalistic shrug and a last almost wistful glance at the teddy. “I have also noted that you do not always take your own advice.”

“Pardon me?”

“Expressing one’s love for another. This also we have discussed, many times. Very many times.”

“Yes, well, my situation is a little different.”

“I do not see that.”

Daniel nudged Teal’c to get him moving down Maple Street, well away from the lingerie window. They were starting to draw attention from passersby, two guys drooling over the female undergarments. At least, being Daniel Jackson, that’s what he thought the pointed stares probably meant. He didn’t notice the wistful backward glances aimed at two remarkably handsome men. In fact, they drew as many stares in front of the barbershop, and crossing the ally toward the bookstore. 

The downtown blocks of Colorado Springs, low-rise office buildings with restaurants and shops on their ground-floors, were a popular shopping venue for the locals, and the Maple Street promenade, closed to vehicle traffic during summer months, drew lots of pedestrians on a sunny afternoon. A hotdog vendor held court in the park, the fresh market did a heavy trade, and the area managed to suck customers away from the box stores and malls on the outskirts of town as long as the light and the weather held. But in a few hours, the shops would close, the hotdog cart would pack up, and the entire downtown would become a virtual ghost-town until Monday morning.

“Why don’t we go for something more appropriate for Sam’s birthday present? Jewelry maybe, a book, some article of clothing that’s a little less… suggestive. Something for her house could work. I usually get something from the Body Shop for special occasions like this. For a woman, anything from the Body Shop is pretty much guaranteed to go over well. There’s one over there on the corner.”

“You are changing the subject, Danieljackson.”

“Yes, I am. Or how about—“

“I do not see how your situation is different from mine.”

“I’ve explained that to you, Teal’c. There’s a strong cultural bias in this society against same-sex relationships. Almost a taboo.”

“And yet, I see evidence everywhere that such relationships are tolerated and condoned. Buddy movies. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Brokeback Mountain.”

“Things are changing, slowly. But not in the U.S. military. It’s still illegal, carrying a prison sentence as punishment. And even if the Powers That Be turn a blind eye… It might be tolerated and condoned, but certainly not encouraged. Not for a career soldier. Not if there’s ever going to be a hope of promotion. And not if we want to keep SG1 intact. I don’t mind heading out with another team every once in a while, but… I’d miss you guys. And you need me.”

“You could be discrete.”

“Well, yes, possibly. But Jack? Discrete? He’s a lot of things, but I never thought of him as discrete.”

Teal’c gave Daniel a very long, hard look. “These are excuses.”

“Yes, they are.”

“They are not the real reason.”

“They’re a lot of the real reason.”

Teal’c waited. He was good at waiting and found it an effective tactic for flushing elusive quarry out of hiding. 

The problem was, Daniel reflected, he had got into the habit from the first of answering any and every question Teal’c asked in the most truthful, detailed and literal way possible. There was really no one else who would do that for the poor guy, at least, not for the difficult, awkward and embarrassing questions. Jack often retreated to jokes, and even after all this time, Teal’c couldn’t always tell. Sam was pretty much guaranteed to collapse in coughing fits or terminal blushes, too strangled to speak, unable to even look at Teal’c for days after some of his more memorable questions. Exact etymology of the insult “douche-bag” for instance… Which pretty much left Daniel. Teal’c deserved to know. Daniel owed it to him to tell him. And since he and Teal’c had revealed their secret feelings for other members of the team, they had spent a lot of platonic buddy time lately crying in each other’s beer. Or at least, his was coffee, and Teal’c stuck to root beer, but still… 

Daniel sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“I do not believe so.”

Daniel sighed again. “But I do the unrequited love thing so well. I’ve got so much practice.”

Again, Teal’c merely waited.

“Okay. First of all, Jack is so straight, he could give lessons to a yardstick. If I came on to him, he’d freak. Then he’d get mad. Then he’d get embarrassed and uncomfortable, and there goes any friendship we now have. I can’t afford to lose that. Second, I’ve got… issues.”

“Issues?”

Daniel felt a decided squirm coming on. He tried to stop it, couldn’t, went with it. What the hell. “It’s about… something that happened when I was a kid. It left scars. Hasn’t been a problem till now, because all of my other relationships have been with women, and… Well, okay, there was Hathor, and that was bad, but I was drugged to the gills and that mess would have freaked anyone, issues or not.”

“You are not being clear, Danieljackson.”

“I know. This is hard, Teal’c.”

And Teal’c waited.

“When my parents died, and Nick wandered off, I ended up in foster care. Some of those places weren’t… very nice. One of them was a certified nightmare. The guy in charge liked… to dominate. Boys. Me. We call it child abuse. Took me a long time to get over that. If I did. Maybe I never will. I’m just not… sure. I mean… what if I finally get Jack alone with me in an appropriate setting and a cooperative frame of mind, he makes a move on me and I… freak out, scream, and bash him over the head with a brass table lamp? At the very least, it’s going to kill the mood.”

Teal’c looked very hard at his friend. “This man in charge of your foster home. Who is he? Where is he?”

“It doesn’t matter. The point is—“

“It does matter. Where can I find this man?” demanded the Jaffa, murder grinding in his voice.

“In a cemetery, I imagine. He’s dead. The point is—“

”What happened to him.”

“Oh, so now you’re willing to be side-tracked.” Daniel was a little impatient with the non-sequitur. Or maybe this was just getting too close to his personal psychic no-man’s-land. “Look, Teal’c, I appreciate your concern, but it was a long time ago, and has nothing to do with—“

“What happened to him, Danieljackson.”

“God, you can be tenacious… Why is it you *never* let me get away with taking the easy emotional out?”

“Because you will not allow it yourself. What happened to him.”

Daniel swore, loud and long, making a little old lady passing by give him a double-take and cross to the park on the other side of the street to avoid him. And he looked like such a nice young man… Then Daniel gave up and answered.

“I’m rather afraid I did.”

“You killed him.” Teal’c blinked. His jaw did not actually drop, this was not possible for a Jaffa warrior, but it wanted to.

“I… bashed him over the head with a brass table lamp. He got up afterwards, but not for long. He died in hospital a week later. Complications, they said. And it’s not the point I was trying to make. You wanted to know why I was dragging my feet about making that pass at Jack. This is why. It’s not that I don’t love him. It’s not that I don’t want him. But with all the risks involved, to our friendship, his career, the team… I can’t take a chance of starting something when it’s less than a fifty-fifty probability that I’ll be able to finish it. There’s just too damn much at stake for me to screw it all up over a childhood trauma I can’t shake. Much better to leave things as they are.”

All of which gave Teal’c a lot to think about. This revelation about Daniel Jackson’s past simply did not fit with the image he had built around the archeologist – a gentle scholar who rarely even remembered he carried a weapon in times of crisis. Yet Daniel had evidently taken a Jaffa-like revenge on the monster who had… raped him. Or was that early experience of violence what had driven Daniel to ruthlessly control and deny his aggressive impulses?

Daniel shrugged, easily guessing what kept Teal’c silent now. “Look, Teal’c, it was bad, yes, but it was a very long time ago, and it wasn’t for very long before it was over.”

“How long?”

He wanted to say twenty days, thirteen hours and eight minutes, but that wasn’t what he wanted Teal’c to hear. Damn it, he knew Teal’c and the others would over-react to this, which is why he had made a point never to bring it up before. He shrugged with forced nonchalance, and said, “I was only in that place for a few weeks. That’s all.” Twenty days, thirteen hours, eight… “And I don’t remember a lot of it anyway.”

In fact, the black-outs had continued for about a year. Result of the concussion, he had been told, but he had overheard the doctors say something about intermittent amnesia caused by physical and psychological trauma. He had grown out of the black-outs by the time the pins came out. The nightmares had lasted longer, of course, but he had grown out of them, too. Eventually. The headaches had persisted, but he took aspirin and they went away.

“It’s over. I grew up. He’s dead and he isn’t coming back, and nobody mourns him, certainly not me. Let it go. I did.”

“Not completely, Danieljackson. Or it would not be a complication now.”

“No. Maybe not. But it’s as much as I can handle for right now, okay? And, as I said, I can do the unrequited love thing standing on my head.”

Teal’c nodded, his bow of acceptance. “However. This is an easy emotional out, and it will not serve you for long.”

“I know,” Daniel acknowledged quietly. Then he shrugged it off. “But we’re here to get you a birthday gift for Sam. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

“What did you purchase for Major Carter’s birthday? Something from the Body Shop?”

“Not this time. I got her a set of books.”

“What books?”

Daniel smiled. “I got her the Harry Potter series. They’re supposed to be for kids, but I really enjoyed them. Cassie gave them to me last Christmas.”

The two men sauntered down the street, window-shopping, hoping inspiration would strike. Two doors down was a bookstore, and the Harry Potter series was on display on a table on the sidewalk. Teal’c picked one up.

“These are for children?”

“Children of all ages. They’re about a little boy who’s an orphan, mistreated by his foster family, who discovers he’s really a powerful wizard.”

Teal’c raised an eyebrow, studying his friend. “You saw something of your own history in it, then?”

“Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. Actually, you might like it, too. Just remember, it’s fiction. Make-believe. As nice as it would be for magic to be real, it isn’t.”

“Like the toys of the Tau’ri children, weapons that do not function.”

“That’s right.”

“I believe I will purchase these. For myself.”

“If you don’t like them, you can always give them to Rya’c.”

Daniel waited on the sidewalk as Teal’c went inside, appreciating the fine summer weather. The mission to help Teal’c shop for a birthday present to give to Sam at the surprise party planned for next Friday night was proving to be a challenging one, on all sorts of levels. But when all Jack would do was suggest sexy lingerie, Daniel had stepped in with an offer of advice and assistance. If all else failed, Daniel supposed, they’d have to get her bath-salts. 

He didn’t notice the shadow of the man until he felt the hand on his shoulder, and the nudge of something hard in the small of his back. Then a low voice said in his ear, “Don’t make a fuss, Dr. Jackson, or attempt to call out, or I will shoot you. Just come with me. Quietly. Now.”

There was something almost familiar about the voice, but it wasn’t until he caught a reflection in the bookstore window that he realized… 

“My God… you’re me…”

Daniel was frozen where he stood, which gave Teal’c the opportunity to sneak up behind the assailant and grab him. But the attacker brought his elbow back sharply, managed to throw Teal’c crashing into the bookstore table and then to the ground. The baseball cap flipped off, revealing Teal’c’s gold Jaffa symbol, the coiled snake of Apophis. The stranger aimed a zat’ni’katel straight at the big Jaffa. One blast put him out cold before he could even get up. 

There would have been a second shot, but Daniel leaped forward, into the line of fire. “No! Teal’c!”

The assailant hesitated. Then he told Daniel, “Come with me. Now.”

There didn’t seem to be any choice. The stranger hustled Daniel around to an alley, made him lean face against a brick wall to be searched. All Daniel had with him was a wallet, keys and a cell phone. The stranger took the keys and wallet, dropped the phone and stomped it to bits.

“You have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Well, lead us there. But be very careful. I don’t know when you were shot by one of these last, but I won’t hesitate.”

Since Daniel’s car was actually parked in this same alley, it was only a few feet away. The stranger gave it a critical look.

“Could be worse, I suppose. Get in. You’ll be driving.”

Since his kidnapper had the keys, he controlled the unlocking and locking of doors. When they were both inside, he passed the keys to Daniel. “We’re going to your apartment.”

“That’s where they’ll look for me first,” Daniel suggested.

“Not until we’ve been and gone, I hope. It’ll be a while before your friend comes round. By the way… that was a Jaffa, right? Have the Goa’uld taken over this world after all?”

That one question confirmed a lot of speculation all at once.

“Okay, so you aren’t one of Harlan’s clone robots, even if you did just knock Teal’c flat… Harlan’s Daniel would know Teal’c. You must have come through the Quantum Mirror. I thought General Hammond had it destroyed.”

“Apparently not. Do the Goa’uld run this place now?”

“No. Teal’c’s a friend. He joined us so he could fight the Goa’uld and free his people.”

“He should give the paramedics a shock. Or does everybody know about the Stargate here?”

“No… it’s a secret.”

“That should make things a little easier.”

“What things? Why did you kidnap me off the street like this?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“I’m sitting in a car, driving an alternate version of myself to my apartment with an alien weapon pointed at my ribs… what wouldn’t I believe?”

“Shut up and keep driving. And don’t bother breaking any traffic rules to attract attention.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Daniel muttered. “Not now, anyway.”

Å 

Jack had been trying to catch up on paperwork when he got the call to report to the briefing room immediately.

“Jack!” the visitor at the table gasped.

Jack stopped at the briefing room door and did a double take at a man who ought to be familiar, but was strangely changed, with long stringy hair, a patchy beard, pallid and drawn face, wearing standard issue fatigue pants and dark khaki t-shirt, neither overly clean or in very good repair. Some of the dark stains might have been blood. Even his strange horn-rim glasses were held together with a strip of adhesive in the middle. And Jack remembered the last time he had walked in and found a fellow SG1 member with weird hair.

“Déjà view,” Jack groaned. “Let me guess. You’re Daniel Jackson from an alternate, alternate, alternate reality. General, I thought you ordered that mirror thing destroyed.”

“I did.”

“I don’t think the Quantum Mirror can be destroyed,” said the alternate Daniel, hardly daring to hope. “You know me?”

“Yes, Daniel, we know you,” Jack drawled. “Or, we know our version of you.”

Sam said, “You do realize there’s already a Daniel Jackson in this reality? The report says you’ve already been here twenty hours. In another twenty-eight, you’ll begin to experience entropic—“

“Entropic cascade tremors. I know, Sam. But I’m here to warn you.” He pulled a tattered piece of yellow lined paper from his pocket and passed it to Sam, who took a look that was only slightly surprised, and passed it to Jack. The visiting Daniel went on, “Apophis is planning an attack on Earth. These are the Stargate coordinates where the attack originates. If you can dial out and get there in time, you may still be able—“

Jack grabbed the tattered piece of paper this long-haired hippy version of Daniel had placed in the centre of the table, passed it to the General and cut the young man short. “Déjà view again. Thanks, but we’ve been there, done that, brought back the zat-guns.”

“You… you went there?”

“A few years ago. Blew up both mother ships. Didn’t get Apophis that time though. Slimy snake-head has more lives than… you do. Thanks for the heads-up, though.”

All the repressed energy seemed to go out of the visitor, leaving him like a punctured balloon. He stared back at them with an expression they had never seen on that face before, even accounting for the scars. Despair.

“You stopped them.”

“That’s what I said. And if you don’t want to start slam-dancing inside your own head, you need to move along.”

“You don’t understand, do you? No, how could you? It all worked out for you. No Goa’uld ha’tak screaming out of the sky, turning the world to dust and ashes until everyone, everyone, is dead. In my reality, my Jack wouldn’t listen. And then it was too late. No one survived but me. No one. Ever since I’ve been trying to find one Earth, just one, where there’s still time for someone to listen. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve failed? How many Earths were destroyed before I had a chance to get to them? I just… I began to think maybe Earth was meant to fall, no matter what anyone did. And now… Now I find this.”

For a moment, he couldn’t seem to speak, and the room was silent. Then he choked out, “Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”

General Hammond said, “Dr. Jackson, I know you’ve been through a lot. I won’t pretend to know… But we have dealt with these issues before. As you must have guessed, our Dr. Jackson did just as you did, discovered the Quantum Mirror on P3X233 by accident, and returned with the co-ordinates that enabled SG1 to save Earth from Goa’uld attack. But we’ve also been visited by refugees from an Earth where things didn’t turn out so well, and we know from bitter experience that there’s no sanctuary for them here. You can’t stay. It’s not my decision or anyone’s, it’s a law of physics.”

This Daniel stiffened a little at that. “Others? What others? It wasn’t another me, was it?”

The other three exchanged glances. Sam said, “No. What makes you think that?”

“You’re sure?” the visitor insisted, looking hunted. Their Daniel never looked hunted, not like this. “It wasn’t another Dr. Jackson?”

“Why another Dr. Jackson?” Hammond demanded.

“It’s just that… there’s one out there who might have tried to get here.” 

Jack groaned. “Aw, for crying out loud… On my best day, and after years of practice, I can just about cope with our own singular Daniel. And I have no real problem with two Carters or two Teal’c’s. I did once, with a gun to my head, have to deal with another me, although that was really pushing my endurance limit. But three of you? That’s just way over the top. I mean… what the hell are we supposed to call you all?”

“The one I’m talking about you definitely call Dr. Jackson. Not Daniel. He’s Dr. Jackson down to his starched socks.”

“Starched socks? Like that, is he?”

“You have no idea. Me, you might as well call DJ.” He gave a wan smile. “My initials. An old nickname, when I was a kid.”

“So explain just who this other Dr. Jackson is, and what he wants in this reality,” Hammond demanded.

“Nothing good, I’m afraid. I met him when I tried to warn his Earth. He never joined his SGA. They called him in to try and verify my story. But by then it was already too late, and long range telemetry had already detected the ha’taks coming out of hyper-space. So they put us in a room together. I told him everything. About the Stargate, the Mirror, the Goa’uld, even entropic cascade failure. He didn’t believe me, of course. Until the first Goa’uld attack leveled Cairo. Then he changed his mind real fast.”

Jack said, “Well, no one ever called you Daniels slow.” 

“Maybe. Anyway… he helped me escape, and we went back to P3X233. He suggested we split up, and both look for Earths we could save, hopefully one where we could stay. He said he’d take the realities where the Mirror had already been taken to Earth and I could take the rest.”

“Took the easy ones, did he?”

“He’s very… Dr. Jackson. I agreed. Anyway, I had a GDO to get back to Earth through the Stargate, and he didn’t.”

“So why are you here?” Sam asked. “They had our Mirror crated up in a warehouse in Washington D.C.”

“In most of the realities where the Mirror stays on P3X233, the Stargate won’t open to Earth at all. Maybe it never got unburied or was buried again, or Earth had been destroyed already. So I tried one where it was all dark. The inside of that crate. I thought it would be okay.”

General Hammond said, “There was no indication that anyone else came through the Mirror either before or after you. Destroying it obviously didn’t work. Any ideas why?”

“Sam says it’s because it doesn’t truly belong in any one reality,” DJ explained. Then he gave an apologetic look at the woman sitting at the table, staring at him. “Sorry. It was another Sam. She theorized that part of it existed in every reality it touched since it was created, and therefore, couldn’t be destroyed in any one reality.”

Sam shrugged. “Makes sense, sir.” She ventured, “If we can’t destroy it, then the next best thing might be to put it back where we got it. At least then, if any more visitors come through, they’ll have to come through the Stargate to reach us, and we control that.” 

“It may be too late,” DJ warned. “If Dr. Jackson did come through, soon after or before me, he wouldn’t try to contact you. I’m afraid he isn’t here to save anything but himself. This isn’t the first time I came to a reality on Earth since we separated. When I did, I was accused of murder.”

“Murder!” the General exclaimed. “Of who?”

“Of their Daniel Jackson. He wasn’t a member of the SGA either. He was giving a lecture at a university back east somewhere. Dr. Jackson hunted him down and killed him in cold blood. But he was seen. He had to make a run for it, and managed to get back to the Mirror. Then I walked through… I barely managed to escape. My guess is Dr. Jackson thought that world was safe, and wanted to stay.”

“Wait wait wait,” Jack protested. “Dr. Jackson killed… himself?”

Sam shrugged. “If Dr. Jackson wants to stay in any reality not his own, he can only do so if the resident Daniel is dead.”

“And this,” DJ underlined the point, “is the only reality I’ve been to out of hundreds where it’s worth staying. If he’s here, he’ll hunt your Daniel down and kill him.”

“That’s a big if,” Hammond suggested hopefully. 

Jack gave Sam a nod, and she pulled the telephone to her. “Try his cell phone.”

“Your Daniel isn’t on the base?” DJ demanded anxiously.

“It’s his day off. He and Teal’c were… had some errands to run in town,” Jack supplied, somewhat evasively, very careful not to look at Sam. Luckily she was dialing.

“Teal’c?” DJ asked. “I don’t know that name.”

“You’d probably recognize him if you… um…” Jack realized this wasn’t a particularly tactful line of conversation. This DJ would have been on the receiving end of the First Prime of Apophis, countless times. 

“No signal,” Sam reported.

General Hammond turned to his aide. “Try his pager, Teal’c’s too.”

“Try Teal’c’s cell,” Jack recommended, but Sam was already dialing.

“What are they doing in town, anyway?” she asked, the very question Jack had hoped she wouldn’t ask. 

“Oh… errands. Guy stuff. Bonding. That sort of thing.”

“No answer on Teal’c’s, either.”

Hammond fired off orders at once. “I want a security team to look for them, immediately. Try Dr. Jackson’s apartment, and the town. I want them brought back to base, ASAP, both of them. Colonel, Major, I want you to take our guest here to the Infirmary. He’s had a rough time of it, and he should be checked out. Then assign him a VIP suite. Get him a hot meal and clean clothes. Dismissed.”

As Jack and Sam led DJ down the corridor, Sam confessed, “I have to admit, I’m a little alarmed, here.”

Jack forced a cheerful smile. “Come on, Carter. He’s with Teal’c. What could happen?”

“Carter?” DJ demanded, his head whipping around to stare at Sam.

“What?” Jack and Sam both demanded at once.

“You’re Sam… Carter? You’re not… uh…”

Sam suddenly became interested in the ceiling and strode on ahead. Jack set his jaw forbiddingly.

“You mean, we’re not married? No. We’re not. We’re both Air Force officers, and it’s against regulations. And why do I have to keep explaining that to everybody who comes through that damned mirror?”

“Sorry,” DJ almost cringed from the ire in Jack, and stammered out, “Its just… everywhere else… I mean… you’re always… I thought it was a rule of some kind.”

“Well it’s not, okay?”

DJ didn’t say a word. Jack frowned at that. Daniel, his Daniel, would never have backed off like that. And Jack had never, in the years he had known the archeologist, and all the strategies he had tried, found any way to get him to shut up on command. So when this one seemed so much easier to control… why did it send a shudder down his back? Not to mention landing him with a pile of kicked-the-puppy guilt.

With DJ huddled in on himself and silent, the rest of the short trip to the Infirmary was uneventful. But once there, having settled him into a cot at the end of the ward where one of the staff doctors rolled a curtain for privacy, Sam and Jack were in for another shock. Teal’c was wheeled in on a gurney, and Doc Fraiser went to him immediately.

“What happened?” Sam demanded, aghast. 

Teal’c groaned and stirred even as the orderlies settled him in a bed.

“It looks like he’s taken a blast from a zat-gun,” Janet Fraiser guessed, checking his eyes, and taking his pulse. “But he’s also had a pretty good knock on the head. Teal’c? Can you hear me?”

The Jaffa opened his eyes, at least.

“Janet?” Sam prompted.

Dr. Fraiser shrugged. “Base security keeps tabs on the emergency call lines and radio frequencies in the area. They heard a paramedic trying to describe Teal’c, and we dispatched a team to intercept the ambulance, and bring him back here. That’s all I know. But he doesn’t seem badly injured. Nothing Junior can’t handle, anyway.”

Jack leaned over his friend. “Teal’c? How are you, buddy? Where’s Daniel?”

“There was another,” Teal’c said, groggily. “Another Danieljackson. He was attempting to abduct our Danieljackson. When I tried to stop him, he knocked me down and fired a zat gun.”

This extraordinary statement was met by blank stares from Dr. Fraiser, Sam and Jack. 

“*Daniel* knocked you down?” Jack gobbled.

Teal’c’s impassive face went more-than-usually wooden. “I was taken by surprise.”

“Daniel knocked *you* down?”

“It wasn’t our Daniel,” Sam offered. “From the sound of it, this alternate Dr. Jackson can be pretty ruthless.”

“Daniel knocked you *down*? Okay. I’ve tried that sentence every way there is, and it still doesn’t track. How the hell did Daniel knock you down?”

“He had a zat’ni’katel,” Teal’c pointed out defensively, “and he was far more physically adept than the Danieljackson of this reality.”

“I don’t care which Daniel it is. Daniel knocked you down?”

“Sir,” Sam prodded her superior officer gently, “we have to report this to General Hammond right away. DJ is right. Dr. Jackson is here, and he has our Daniel.” 

Jack could only agree. “All right. I’ll report. Make sure there’s an airman on our visitor at all times.” Then he left the Infirmary, still shaking his head.

Dr. Janet Fraiser looked from Jack O’Neill’s back, to the examination curtain, to Teal’c lying on the Infirmary cot, struggling not to show how much his head hurt. Then, after directing one of her staff to bring Teal’c an aspirin, Janet pulled Sam to a discrete distance.

“Let me get this straight. Three Daniels? *Three*?”

Sam sighed. Janet was going to be difficult about this, she could tell. “Yes. Ours, and two from alternate realities. They both came through the Quantum Mirror.”

“O Mama! Three Daniels, no waiting. That makes one for me, one for you, and one for the Colonel, once he gets his head out of his own ass and in the one where it belongs. Dibs on the one with the long hair.”

“Janet!” Sam groaned, shaking her head, struggling to get her mind out of the hormone-soaked gutter where Janet so consistently managed to drag it. “What about Teal’c?”

“Let him grab his own Daniel.”

“That’s not what I mean. How is he?”

“Going to be really embarrassed for a very long time, because the Colonel is *not* going to let this go.”

“He’s okay, really?”

Janet took pity on her with a smile. “Really, hon. You know I wouldn’t be joking like this if it were serious. Come on, Sam, you’ve all been knocked on the head and zatted before. Business as usual. He’s fine. Now the dishy Daniel with the carressable hair is in major danger of being sponged to within an inch of his life if I don’t get in there to supervise.”

“Janet, this is serious. Daniel, our Daniel, is in serious trouble here.”

“Daniel, in danger from Daniel. Do you realize how nuts that sounds? Even against the skewed SGC standard for nuts?”

“Almost as nuts as Daniel laying Teal’c flat.”

Janet hesitated, glancing back at the big Jaffa. “Okay. Point taken. Does it occur to you that we may possibly have taken our favorite archeologist for granted all these years?”

“It occurs to me a lot. And right now, I get the distinct feeling that I am the only one around here who’s taking this at all seriously! Look, I’ve got to assign a babysitter for our guest. While I do that, watch DJ for me, will you?”

“Oh, that will *definitely* be my pleasure.”

“Janet!”

Å 

Daniel opened the door to his apartment and they both stepped in. There was no one waiting, much to Daniel’s disappointment. He was feeling very uneasy around this cold version of himself. Not scared, exactly… How could he possibly be scared of himself? 

He supposed he should try escaping. Otherwise his team-mates would have to come and rescue him… again. He really hated when that happened. All three of them – not to mention the rest of the base – were always over-protective of the lone true civilian in their midst, especially after one of these in-harm’s-way episodes. It took weeks, sometimes, to get them to take their eyes off him even for a second. It was marginally easier if he managed to save himself, first. So he really ought to try something. It was no accident that every room in his apartment, and his office back at the SGC, were all provided with large brass table lamps with heavy, solid bases.

But escaping wouldn’t tell him what his other self was doing here. And his besetting sin always had been and always would be curiosity. Besides… how much danger was he really in? This was Daniel Jackson. He just couldn’t bring himself to consider he was truly in a life-threatening situation here. Which… might go a long way to explain why the rest of the SGC had a tough time taking him seriously, if he couldn’t even manage it himself. 

The other Daniel Jackson studied his apartment with mild curiosity, and slight distaste. “Well, it’s not totally unlivable, anyway.”

“Thank you,” Daniel replied dryly. “Where are you living? When you’re home in your own reality, that is.”

“I have a penthouse condo in downtown Chicago. Great view of Lake Michigan and the harbor.”

“Let me guess. You never joined the SGC.”

“No. I wasn’t stupid enough to deep-six a promising career by claiming that space aliens built the pyramids. You did?”

“Uh, I was right.”

“And I live in a penthouse suite with a Porsche and a six-figure income, lecturing all over the world.”

“Excuse me, but what happened to your world?”

“It blew up.”

“I see. Goa’uld attack?”

“Of course.”

“Well, mine didn’t, in large part because I did tell the truth, I didn’t get the condo, Porsche and lecture tours, and I did join the SGC. Oh, and, by the way? I do have the six-figure income. The US military pays its civilian consultants very well. I even get a bonus every time I save the planet.”

The other’s mouth twisted wryly. “Touché. You have a desk?”

Daniel pointed to the den, and the other shooed him in first. There wasn’t much there, of course.

“General Hammond made a rule about me not bringing work home anymore, or keeping anything here. He has the security guards empty my briefcase and check my pockets every time I leave the base, because I forget. Well, maybe not forget exactly, but… Anyway. I have nothing here from the base.”

“Why the rule?”

“I was declared dead once too often. He didn’t want anything SGC-related to get into the wrong hands.” Daniel said this with a certain amount of chagrin. The other stared at him a moment.

“You do have a dangerous job, don’t you?”

Daniel shrugged. “I like to think of it as earning the obscenely large income. The only work I have here is some ancient Egyptian translations I’m re-working for a monograph I might actually publish one day. Nothing to do with the SGC.”

“You’ve got Babylonian cuneiform here too. Akkadian, not Sumerian.”

“That’s a private research project I’ve been doing.”

The other leafed through it. “Belus? Omoroca?”

“It’s pronounced Amerocca, actually. It’s research I’m doing for a friend.”

“Nothing to do with the SGC.”

“Not… not really, no.”

“So, where do you keep your journals? I don’t suppose you have a computer? A safe? A hidden cupboard?”

“No. I told you. All of my journals, files and notes are on the base. They won’t even let me bring a laptop home.”

“It was worth checking out. So. You went to P3X233, found the mirror, went through, and brought back the magic address, did you? And… what? Did they listen to you?”

“Eventually, yes.”

“The address worked?” the other queried, mildly surprised.

“Yes. It was a Stargate on board one of the ha’tak attack ships bound for Earth. The address only worked while the ship was still in orbit around its base.”

“And you went there. And you stopped the attack?”

Daniel nodded. “Me and the rest of SG1, along with the Jaffa resistance.”

“Congratulations. That was more than the wimp could do.”

“The wimp?”

“The wimp. Another one of us. Like you, when Catherine Langford came calling, he had painted himself into a very long, dark corner, so he joined the SGA rather than live on the streets. Long hair, no sense of style whatsoever. Calls himself DJ.”

“DJ,” Daniel smiled. “Andy calls me that.”

The other stared. “Andy Perez? He’s alive here?”

“Uh… yes.”

“But… what about the Major?”

What a coincidence, Daniel thought, struggling hard to repress a shudder, as did the other. He had told Teal’c the story less than an hour ago, and now… “The Major died. A long time ago.”

“When you were eight. About a month after you were sent to live with him. The night he beat Andy Perez to death in every other reality I’ve been to, and in most of them, kills us too. Just out of curiosity… how did your Major die?”

Daniel looked up at the other, but couldn’t speak.

“You did it? You were eight years old, a scrawny little four-eyed geek. He was a Marine Major in Special Forces with black ops and hand-to-hand training… How the hell did you do it?”

Daniel swallowed, battling the long-buried memories that flooded back to him for the second time that day, that hour. “Remember the brass lamp in the living room?”

“Yeah.”

“I bashed him over the head with it.”

“Well,” the other breathed. “I’m impressed. Really. Now come on. We’d better leave before your friends figure out where we’ve gone. And we’ll have to steal a car. They’ll be looking for yours.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Guess.”

“We can’t just walk into the base. Not together.”

“No, we can’t.”

“You do realize you’ve got a deadline for being here in this reality?”

“Forty-eight hours before entropic cascade failure begins. I know.”

“Then what do you want? Why are you here? Why are you doing this?” 

The phone on the desk rang. Both Daniels stopped and stared at it. The other smiled. “Go ahead. Answer it. On speaker.”

It was Sam, greeting him with breathless relief. “Daniel! Thank God. We’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Hello Sam. I’m not alone right now—“

“He’s with you? Dr. Jackson, can you hear me?”

“I assume you mean me,” said the other.

“That was him, Sam,” Daniel said after a short silence. “He’s got a zat gun on me. How is Teal’c?”

“He’ll be fine, when Colonel O‘Neill stops teasing him. Dr. Jackson, I don’t suppose you’d consider turning yourself in? We can promise you safe passage through the Quantum Mirror, to any reality you choose, if you’ll let Daniel go.”

The other, Dr. Jackson, frowned at the phone. “You’ve got DJ with you, haven’t you? He’s told you I’m a murderer, that my aim is to kill your Daniel so I can stay in this reality. Did it occur to you that the wimp might be lying to you? That he’s the murderer?”

“Dr. Jackson, please, you haven’t got much time left. Give yourself up. We’re bringing the Mirror here on base. We intend to send it back to P3X233. Your only chance of reaching it in time is to give yourself up. If you want, we can arrange a meeting on neutral territory—“

“I don’t think so,” Dr. Jackson replied coldly, reaching forward to disconnect. “Come on. We have some traveling to do.”

“Why? Where? I thought you wanted to go to the base.”

“I know you’re curious. Luckily, it won’t kill you. On the other hand, I might. Now come on.”

“Is that why you want my journals?” Daniel guessed. “So you can catch up on this reality, and pass as me? You can’t believe that will work. And even then, you’d have to kill me first. Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Maybe, if you don’t move right now,” repeated Dr. Jackson, even as the sirens blared in the street below. 

“You’re not going to kill me.”

“Are you so sure?”

“You’ve got a zat gun. If you were going to do it, I’d be a memory right now. For some reason, you need me alive.”

“Maybe. For now. That could change. Move.”

Å 

The next hours were frustrating and increasingly tense for everyone at the SGC. There was no word from the APB that had been placed on Dr. Daniel Jackson – any and every Dr. Daniel Jackson – and none of the security teams sent out to look had found a thing. For once, the briefings avoided stating the obvious – that the renegade Dr. Jackson had every reason to kill Daniel, and only one to keep him alive.

DJ passed his physical, and was released to the base VIP suite, allowed to go where he wanted on the base as long as a security guard went with him. No one considered DJ capable of overpowering even the smallest airman.

So when Jack went looking and couldn’t find their guest in his quarters, he knew immediately where to go next. Daniel’s office. What he saw there took him back in time, the first two years of the program, and an impossibly young-looking Daniel with long floppy hair and all the passionate intensity of youth… But it wasn’t his Daniel. It was a struggle to remember that.

DJ, it was DJ, seated at the desk, just the one goose-neck lamp over his work, reading old mission journals. His heavy, broken horn-rim glasses were cast aside on a corner of the desk, and he wore Daniel’s extra pair, the ones with the gold rims. The visitor had evidently made himself at home. As if he knew this office as well as the original. He didn’t even look up as Jack knocked on the door-frame and leaned against it.

DJ shook his head. “How did he do it? Your Daniel. You believed him when he came back from P3X233 with that wild story about alternate realities – you actually believed him?”

“Not exactly, no. I didn’t. But… sometimes you – he – Daniel is hard to say no to. Make that impossible.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jack could see he was being towed into awkward territory and tried to side-step. “Hell. You know how you get.”

“Apparently not.”

“Come on. You must know. You get this stubborn look and you’re like a dog with a bone. Nothing will make you let go until you get what you want or something shakes loose. So most of the time it’s just a whole lot easier to go along. I went along. And, as it turned out, you – he – Daniel was right. Again.”

DJ turned over the pages of the journal. “It didn’t happen like this for me. No one listened. No one believed. There was nothing I could do. Nothing but watch it all destroyed, over and over.”

Jack shifted uneasily. He had the unnerving impression that DJ was on the verge of tears. If that happened, there was nothing for it but to run for cover.

“Look, DJ, why don’t we go and get you something in the commissary? Doc Fraiser wants you to eat. You’re a little run down. Oh, hey, here’s Teal’c. You haven’t met him yet, have you? Teal’c, come meet DJ. Another one of Daniel’s… versions.”

Teal’c came into the office, and bowed, offering a hand in Earth fashion. 

DJ took one look at the big Jaffa, let out a yell, and turned over his chair in his effort to back against the wall. He cowered there, practically weeping in terror, sliding till he bunched into a knot on the floor. 

“I should have known this place was too good to be true! It was all a lie, wasn’t it? You have been taken over. Are you all Goa’uld? What do you want with me?”

Jack stared in amazement. “For crying out loud. This is Teal’c, DJ. He’s a friend.”

“A friend? He’s Jaffa! He’s first prime of Apophis for God’s sake! Do you know how many Earths he’s ground into dust?”

“This Teal’c? Yes. None. I said he’s a friend. Now come on, get up. Teal’c joined us years ago to fight the Goa’uld. He’s on our side. We are not Goa’ulds, we’re not lying to you or trying to trap you. Now come on.”

Jack offered DJ a hand to get up off the floor, but DJ thought long and hard before he accepted. He shuddered every time he looked at the Jaffa, and cowered if Teal’c looked his way.

“I am no threat to you, Danieljackson,” he said. But even as he said the name, it turned sour in his mouth. “DJ,” he tried instead. “Your other self, the Danieljackson of this reality, trusts me, and values my knowledge.”

“I, uh, I’m sure he does. But if you wouldn’t mind backing up a little… you’re… you’re… big.”

Teal’c bowed, somewhat stiffly. “I will leave you, then.”

Jack said, “Uh-oh, now you’ve done it. You’ve hurt his feelings.”

“A Jaffa, with feelings?”

“Well, he doesn’t like to let them show. Try to be nicer to him, okay?”

DJ looked warily at the Colonel. “Okay… If you say so, Jack. He won’t… sneak up on me, will he?”

“Pardon me? Teal’c isn’t the sneaking type.”

“Not yours, maybe.” DJ shook his head. “What kind of upside-down reality is this, anyway? You and Sam not… a Jaffa, Apophis’ first prime at that, with the run of the SGA, and a Daniel who…” DJ trailed off, glancing at the open journals. “He married an Abydonian?”

Jack nodded.

“We… we never got to know them. We knew they were there, but… I wanted to go and meet them, try and find out more about them, see if they had a copy of the cartouche with the address for home. But Jack – my Jack, wouldn’t allow it.”

“And you listened to him – me?” Jack demanded, incredulous.

DJ stared back, both across the gulf of differences. “You can be very intimidating. I thought you hated my guts. Right about then, I’m pretty sure you would have put a bullet in my head for two cents. I obeyed orders.”

“You, Daniel Jackson, obeying my orders. Be still my heart. So if Sha’re didn’t show you the cartouche hidden in the catacombs under the town, how did you find a way back?”

“There was a temple a little way from the pyramid. It was filled with cartouches, Stargate addresses for the entire network—“

“Oh, yeah, that place. Our Daniel found it too, eventually.”

“Once we found that, it was just a matter of figuring out which one was for Earth. But… Ra arrived. We were attacked. Jack gave the order… He blew the Gate, and Abydos, behind us. All of these people Daniel talks about in his journal, Skaara, Sha’re, Kasuf… they’re all dead, and we never even met them.”

Since the visitor was getting that weepy look again, Jack decided it was time to ease his way out. 

“Jack…” said DJ as O’Neill turned to leave. “It’s… not the same with us here, is it?”

Shock rooted Jack in the doorway. Those were the exact words the alternate Dr. Samantha Carter had used when she told him they had been lovers, married even, in her version of reality. And suddenly he knew, he just knew… DJ was going to explode the very same bombshell, right in his face.

Time stopped. Not a damn time loop, not alien technology gone totally haywire, but one of those God-awful moments of hyper awareness and personal realization that jams up every nerve and changes everything. Everything. One of those “O God stop the bus and let me get off before it crashes” moments that stretch a split second into eternity. He’d already had way too many of those for one lifetime. But this one…

In a rushing flood, he saw flash-point visions of the past six years, all of Daniel Jackson. Daniel laughing, Daniel crying, Daniel dying, Daniel with that gamin shy grin that turned his insides to water even though he didn’t know… Hell! He didn’t want to know why! Daniel arguing with him, pissed, furious, aggravated or patient, Daniel with feet planted, chin jutting obstinately, standing his ground on yet another issue that meant life and death to him. Daniel making him so damn mad he could spit, defying orders, wandering off, rushing into the thick of danger, sticking his nose where it had no business being, Daniel the object of lust by every female and way too many men who happened to cross their paths – not to mention slugs, sea monsters, big scaly lizards, glowy clouds and those damned Goa’uld snakes. Daniel the passionate, committed, awesomely intelligent, frighteningly reckless, monumentally naive, too damn honest for his own good, loyal, way-too-friendly, often flaky but always with his heart in the right place Daniel… the one and only Daniel he… 

Aw hell. He was in love with Daniel.

Of course he was. Why the hell should it be easy, and he be in love with Carter, as he had tried to tell himself he was, any time this past five years? Yeah, sure he loved her… just not in… aw hell. His first clue should have been when obeying regulations was enough to make him keep his hands off her. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let that stand in his way when Danny got back. He’d had to lie to himself, put his libido in a deep freeze, and sublimate like hell to get this far without fessing up to himself. Hell, even he didn’t like hockey *that* much.

But this Daniel, cleaned up but skinny and pale, with long dark-blonde hair spilling across his forehead, eyes huge and dark behind a borrowed pair of gold-rim glasses, looking so right and feeling so wrong… was talking. “I just thought… since you and Sam aren’t… but you aren’t with him, either, are you?”

“No,” Jack replied tightly, wondering about the best way to get DJ to back the hell off. Luckily, he was easy to intimidate, unlike other archeologists he could mention. So he beetled his brows, chilled his voice to flash-freeze, and said, “No. I’m not *with* anyone.” Then he said, “Doctor’s orders are that you get something to eat. Now. That’s an order, and you, apparently, obey my orders. Come on.” He turned and walked out, trying not to think about… things. Any things. Wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now, especially if Daniel, his, most definitely his Daniel, didn’t make it back in one piece?

He found Carter coming down the corridor with a reluctant Teal’c in tow.

“Sir? Dr. Fraiser wants DJ to get something hot to—“

“I know, Major. Just seeing to it. Come on, DJ.”

Jack O’Neill stood at the door of the office as DJ came through.

It was the very smallest of gestures. Just a reaching hand from one and the infinitesimal shifting of the other’s body to avoid physical contact. It would have passed completely unnoticed by anyone else. But not by Sam or Teal’c, who both stood mesmerized in the middle of the passageway while the other two went on ahead. 

And then they snuck furtive glances at each other…

“Well,” Sam commented with what was, after all, a relieved sigh. “At least that cat is finally out of the bag.”

Teal’c raised an eyebrow. There were too many things he wanted to ask, and, for once, didn’t know where, or how, to begin. Sam saw his nonplussed expression, and smiled. “Come on, Teal’c. Let’s catch up to them. Tell you what. I’ll buy you a root beer and we can compare notes in the corner of the commissary. But those two need a couple of chaperones.”

“Indeed?” Which, in Teal’c-speak, Sam knew, meant, “How do you figure?”

“Someone we both know and love has finally – finally – caught a clue, and I don’t trust either one of them to be gentlemen enough to keep their hands to themselves. No way does this DJ steal Daniel’s thunder.”

“Indeed…?” Teal’c knew himself he was becoming redundant, but could not think of anything else to say. But he blinked in the micro-expression that told Sam he was warily waiting for clarification, lest he place a Jaffa-sized foot in his mouth. She smiled at him, and suddenly, bewildered or not, he felt very much better. Glowing, in fact. She took his arm in a comradely – far too comradely and not nearly intimate enough – way, and they proceeded down the corridor behind Jack and DJ.

Considering how nervous the newcomer was around the Jaffa, they probably would have been sitting at a considerable distance in the commissary anyway. Just as well. Sam was careful to seat she and Teal’c in the corner, well away from anyone else, but they both sat with their backs to the wall, and a good view of where Jack cautiously waited till DJ was down with his tray before he took a chair opposite.

“So,” Sam whispered, taking a spoon-full of lime jello – the commissary being out of her favorite blueberry. “When did you first figure it out? About Daniel and the Colonel?”

Teal’c tilted his head to one side as he sipped his root-beer through a straw. “When you rescued O’Neill and I from the death-glider in Jacob’s tel’tak. O’Neill fell into Danieljackson’s arms, and Danieljackson would not let him go. Not even when we landed, and Dr. Fraiser pried his fingers loose.”

“Yes, that was a giveaway, all right. But I missed it. I guess I was still… well, in my own defense, all I can say is, I was getting mixed messages. First it was Jolinar whispering sweet-Martuf in my ear, then there were all those alternate me’s putting a noose on their Colonels, and then our Colonel himself was overcompensating for something… Actually, it was Janet suggested it first.”

“Dr. Fraiser is extremely perceptive.”

“And a lot richer than she was, because I told her she was crazy and put fifty on it.”

“I myself placed ten.”

Sam grinned. “But I paid off on the bet after Anise put us into those damned zatarc detectors. Jeez. I should have blown those things to hell then and there. Talk about sweating bullets…”

Teal’c raised an interrogating eyebrow.

“Well, Teal’c. Whatever the Colonel was hiding, I knew damned well it wasn’t anything to do with me. But after it was all over, there was Daniel in the Gateroom after all the shooting stopped, in his diplomat suit looking good enough to eat and all anxious and concerned, you know that cute little look he gets, with the scrunchy little lines between his eyebrows… and the Colonel couldn’t take his eyes off him. Hel-lo. Good thing I managed to feed him an excuse, earlier. And then I figured I‘d just… let the rumors circulate. I mean, it isn’t the first time a guy has used a woman for cover. If the Colonel had been forced to make any kind of declaration under the Zatarc detector, on the record and no matter how secret and private it was supposed to be, it would have ruined him. Maybe he didn’t realize himself what was really going on. In fact, now I think about it, I’m sure he didn’t. And for a few really bad moments, I thought he wouldn’t get the hint I was trying to feed him. He feels more than he should for me? At least it was the truth – he feels more than he should for General Hammond, for God's sake.”

“Then… you have no strong feelings for O’Neill yourself?” Teal’c began to feel very good, indeed.

“Of course I do. Just as I have for Daniel and you.”

And then he felt very depressed, indeed.

“If the Colonel needs cover, I don’t mind providing it. I can take one for the team. The only thing I really don’t get about this…”

“Is how Danieljackson can be in love with O’Neill?”

Sam gave a wry grin. “Oh, believe me, I know exactly what Daniel sees in the Colonel. And by the way, I do notice neither one of us thinks to question what the Colonel sees in Daniel. No, what I don’t get is why Daniel hasn’t made a move by now. Sha’re’s been dead for a long time.”

Teal’c lifted his chin. “Danieljackson has issues.” He was rather proud of being able to use this colloquialism in a correct manner. 

Sam blinked. For a moment she wondered where Teal’c had got that… then she realized she knew. And for a split second, she wondered if she ought to be hurt that Daniel could have confided in Teal’c, and not in her. Then she put the rest of the equation in place. “Oh wait. Daniel bought the act too, didn’t he? That Colonel O’Neill was pining for me, held up by regulations, and I was putting him on hold for my career… Daniel’s holding off because of me?”

“No. He does not believe O’Neill is pining for you, although he is concerned that you do not know that.”

Sam shrugged that off. “Then what? What issues does Daniel have?”

“I am not certain he would want me to tell.”

“Well, now I am hurt. Teal’c, this is me. Daniel’s like my little brother and the Colonel… I would never do or say anything to hurt either one of them. What issues are you talking about?”

“Danieljackson had a difficult childhood. There was an incident, after the death of his parents, in one of the foster homes. He was abused. It affected him deeply. He is not certain he can respond correctly to a male lover.”

“My God… Daniel was… Jeez, Teal’c, he was only eight years old when… okay, that’s an issue. By the way, I don’t suppose you know where we can find the bastard who did it?”

“There is no need. Danieljackson took his own revenge, long ago.”

“He… what? This is our Daniel you’re talking about, right? Not an alternate version?”

They both glanced across the commissary, where DJ toyed with the food on his plate, under O’Neill’s forbidding frown.

“Okay, so it’s not cordon bleu. You still have to eat it,” Jack growled.

DJ sent a shy smile up from under incredibly long lashes. “Cordon bleu? Jack, it isn’t even Woolworth’s blue plate special. Not that I know cordon bleu, but I am a great connoisseur of greasy spoons, and this is way below par.”

Jack gave a reluctant smile back. “I told you to try the beef.”

“Is that what the green stuff was?” He chuckled, sitting back in his chair, some of the strain in his face easing away, dropping years from him, reminding Jack of the deceptively-harmless young archeologist he had been struggling to keep out of trouble, struggling to keep alive, struggling not to touch the past four years. Well, five if you count the first mission, and a year of sleepless nights wondering what he was doing…

DJ must have been remembering, too. An alternate reality that was more real to him than this one. That might almost be mistaken for this one, if one could only forget enough horror, death and pain. The shadows crowded back in those dark blue eyes.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… it was almost like…”

“Old times?”

DJ nodded. “Complaining about the commissary food. The one thing we always have in common, no matter… no matter what else is different.”

Jack found it very hard, suddenly, to look away from those eyes. And the harder it was, the more he knew he had to do it. So he concentrated on his… whatever the hell it was they put on his plate. “So, DJ. You’ve told me a little about yourself. What about this other guy? Dr. Jackson. What turns Daniel into a murderer?”

DJ blinked. “Is it? Murder? Doesn’t that depend on… what you view as real? I mean… I know I’m real. I know I’m Daniel Jackson. But you know I’m not. Not really. You can’t prove it with fingerprints or retinal scans or blood-work or even DNA screens, because all of them would prove just the opposite. The only way to know who is real and who is not is by what each of us remembers that coincides with what you remember. And who’s to say if that’s proof enough? And who’s right? If your Daniel is real, yes, killing him is murder. But what if I’m the real one? Or Dr. Jackson is? Or even if you ignore who is more real than whom, even if one Daniel Jackson is dead, and there’s still a Daniel Jackson here… How can it possibly be called murder?”

Jack shook his head, troubled. He remembered the last time the Quantum Mirror coughed up a problem like this. When he, Teal’c and Daniel had gone to the other reality, Teal’c had faced his other self, leveled his staff weapon, and shot point blank. Asked why, Teal’c had said, “Only our reality is truly real.”

Jack squirmed. “This isn’t your reality. You were never a part of it. You didn’t make it what it is. You don’t have any right to be here, or to take it away from the Daniel who belongs here.”

DJ smiled a little. “Be careful, Jack. You’ve just argued against immigration, or your friend Teal’c over there. He wasn’t born here. He doesn’t have any right to come and try to make a better life for himself.”

Jack made a frustrated noise. He never could win an argument with Daniel… No, damn it, DJ. Not Daniel. Not Daniel. “That’s different. There’s no quantum flux tremor thing about to show Teal’c he doesn’t belong.”

“No,” DJ agreed, his eyes growing even darker, his skin gone suddenly pale. “No. That’s true. God, Jack… you don’t know… You can’t know what those tremors are like. It’s not pain really… It’s worse. Pain I can do, standing on my head. But those tremors… they take you right out and shake you like a dog with a rat in its teeth. It takes you out of any reality at all, away from touch and sound and taste and sight, away from time, so it seems to go on forever. You wish it would kill you, just so it would be over. But you know you won’t be that lucky. 

“I’ve gone through the mirror to some reality that looked promising… a Stargate open on an Earth that seems to be in one piece… and for a time, I begin to think maybe this is the one, one where I can make a place for myself, where I can have another chance… that maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally come home… and the tremors take over and I know there’s another Daniel. But most of the time he’s like Dr. Jackson – never got involved in the SGA, could care less about the fate of the Earth… why should he have more of a right to a life there than I do? What makes him better, more worthy, more deserving than me? And if I feel that way, I can only imagine how Dr. Jackson feels, the great Dr. Jackson, eminent scholar, respected archeologist, with his penthouse condo, his Porsche, his lecture tours and adoring fans and his wealth and power… I know he feels that way about me. Because I did find an Earth, just once, that would have been perfect, that was my best, maybe my only chance… Better yet, their Daniel had died, in another mission… and best of all, you were there, Jack. Alive and well.” 

DJ turned his head away for a moment, a strange gasping coming from him. When at last he looked searchingly back into Jack’s eyes, his own were suspiciously bright. “Do you know how rare that is? You take such terrible chances. Always the last through the Gate, always there at the last defense, whenever there is one… But this one time, Earth was safe, there was no other Daniel to compete, and you were there. And after two months, I thought I was safe. I thought I was home. But then… the tremors began. And I knew he had come through. He tried to kill me. It was Jack saved my life, at the cost of his own. General Hammond threw us both through the mirror, then launched it into space to stop either of us from coming back. God, Jack… I’m so tired. All I want is to go home… And I’ve just about given up believing there will ever be one, for me.”

Å 

Dr. Jackson knew of a deserted house, fifty miles from the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, deep in the Colorado forests, a good five miles from any other sign of habitation. The hideout enabled him to hide the car away from prying eyes. He handcuffed Daniel to an old pipe in a grimy bathroom for the night. Come morning, Daniel was still there, wondering how much of a fool he was, sticking around to see how it all came out. He had a crick in his neck, was absolutely famished, and had a severe headache from caffeine withdrawal. And not a brass table lamp in sight. About all he could say was, he’d been in worse prisons. Netu for example.

Next morning, Dr. Jackson checked to make sure he was still secured, then left for two hours. He returned with a different car, and a cardboard tray with two coffees and a take-out breakfast. When they had finished, Dr. Jackson said, “All right, Daniel. You’ve got two choices. If you behave yourself, you can drive the car and we can converse like civilized people. Or I can zat you, tie you up, gag you and dump you in the trunk of the car. I have no preference either way, so it’s up to you.”

“Oh, I’ll take option A, thank you. I’m not real fond of being zatted, especially after a meal.”

They were underway, and Dr. Jackson asked, “Happens to you a lot? Being zatted?”

“Not as much as getting pinned by those Goa’uld hand-devices, but yes, a fair bit.”

Dr. Jackson studied him curiously. “You go on missions, don’t you? First contact missions?”

“Yes, of course.”

“There’s no of course about it. You’re a civilian in a military operation. The wimp, DJ, his SGA only let him through the Gate after the areas were thoroughly secured.”

Daniel frowned. “What good is that? Unless his Jack is a hell of a lot better at languages and diplomacy than mine is.”

“Far as I’ve seen, no Jack O’Neill bothers with diplomacy as long as he has a big enough gun.”

“Yes, well, that’s why they need me. At least I’m willing to talk first and shoot later. Much later. If at all. I hate to think what some of these worlds would look like after being ‘thoroughly secured’, if I weren’t there to tell them what not to blast into bits. Um… you do know how these zat’ni’katels work, don’t you?”

“The first shot stuns, the second kills, and the third disintegrates. Yes, I know. There’s also a recovery time between shots, but I don’t know how long that is. Do you?”

“We haven’t exactly tested it. Teal’c says it’s ten hours on Jaffa, but they have symbiotes, so… From experience, twenty-four hours seems to be long enough to recover from one shot before a human being can take the next and survive.”

“So you should be good to take one hit right now.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Then behave yourself, and drive.”

Daniel managed to restrain himself until they turned onto the main highway. Then his curiosity overcame any wariness about the zat aimed at his ribs. “So… what happened to your Major?”

“What do you care?”

“Come on. There’s just you and me alone in the car with a lot of time to kill… I’m curious. You understand that, don’t you? Obviously, our lives started to diverge after the Major… died in my reality, and didn’t in yours. Tell me what happened. I’m the one person who’ll understand.”

“Jeez, Daniel Jackson, counselor. Okay. You picked up the brass table lamp. I picked up a shovel, and helped him bury Andy’s body in the back yard. And I became a good little soldier. Yes sir, how high sir. Chip off the block, fair-haired boy. At least it got me out of the beatings. You understand that, Mr. Sensitive?”

Daniel swallowed with difficulty. “Yes. I think I do.”

“That lasted till the day I turned sixteen. Then I realized I could take the bastard. And I beat him into the ground. Then I left. I lied about my age and joined the Marines—“

“You *what*?”

“Yeah, you’d have thought I’d had enough of that shit. But I figured, after the Major, I could do boot camp standing on my head. And I was right. I did two tours, made Sergeant, then I finally realized what a schmuck I was being. That I was just trying to prove I was better than the Major. So I bailed and got a life of my own… and started trying to prove I was as good as Mom and Dad. Yeah, I’m a bright boy, all right. At least the Marines paid for my college. I got a charge out of taking an artsy-fartsy degree like archeology… the Major must have rolled in his grave. There’s revenge for you.”

“He was dead?”

Dr. Jackson nodded. “By then, yeah. One drunken bar brawl too many. No loss. Anyway. When Langford showed up, the last thing I wanted was to waste any more time playing military bottom-boy. I tossed her out on her ear.”

Daniel digested this. It was not lost on him that even talking about that time brought a tough, back-alley coarseness to Dr. Jackson’s diction and accent. Language was his life, after all. He shook his head in wonder at the ways in which one person could turn out so differently. A whole future had been poised on the edge of that brass table lamp. More than one future, he thought, remembering Andy’s last Christmas card. Married with three kids now. One of them named Daniel. 

“Sergeant Daniel Jackson, marine,” he mused. “Jack would love you.”

“Ya think?” Dr. Jackson retorted with a leer. Which brought Daniel’s head around with a snap. But he didn’t dare – just couldn’t – ask the question, even indirectly. 

Daniel drove on in silence for a while. Then Dr. Jackson ventured, “Did you ever get married?”

“Yes. I did.”

“How long?”

Daniel winced. It still felt like a raw wound. “Actually three and a half years. But we were separated after the first.”

“Did she say why she left?”

Daniel frowned. “Pardon me?”

“Sarah. Didn’t she tell you why she left?”

“I was never married to Sarah. We broke up just before I… You and Sarah got married?”

“So who did you marry if it wasn’t Sarah?”

“You wouldn’t know her. She was an Abydonian. Her name was Sha’re The Goa’uld took her from me. Turned her into a host. She died a while ago.”

Dr. Jackson frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I. What’s this about you and Sarah?”

“It didn’t work out. She… she said I wasn’t being true to myself, or fair to either one of us. That there was more to life than money. I told her she was crazy. Still trying to prove myself to the dead, I guess. But then, she didn’t know I was having an affair with one of my grad students, so I was probably living on borrowed time there anyway… I just thought… you took the big chance to tell the world what you really thought about the Great Pyramid at Giza, so I just figured… maybe it worked out for you and Sarah.”

“No. When I tried to publish what I believed, I became a pariah pretty fast, as you can imagine. I decided I didn’t want to take anyone down with me, so I backed off from everyone. My choice, not theirs. I’m not sure any of them see it as a noble gesture, though. Steven is still pretty bitter. And he does have the penthouse condo, the six-figure income, the books on the best-seller list and the Porsche.”

“And none of them know what you’re doing now.”

“No.”

“You live a pretty lonely life, then.”

“Well, I do keep busy. The SGC is my family now. Jack, Sam and Teal’c. Along with Kasuf and Skaara – Sha’re’s father and brother. Then there’s Catherine and Ernest, and Cassie… no, you wouldn’t know Cassie.”

“And Nick?” Dr. Jackson asked cautiously.

Daniel smiled. “We… sent him on a mission. He hasn’t got back to us yet. Oh, he was right, too.”

“You’re joking. The giant aliens?”

“We met them. In the cavern he always talked about. We found it.”

The other chortled, then snapped to attention. “There. That telephone booth. Stop there. Good. Now get out of the car. Over there, behind that bush so you can’t be seen from the road. On your knees. Hands under your knees. Good. Now don’t move. I’ve got a call to make.”

Dr. Jackson checked his watch as he dialed a number he knew well. In moments, the call was put through to the interested parties. He was almost positive he had interrupted a crisis-briefing already in session. And he had.

“Well well, and how is everyone on level twenty-eight?”

“Suppose you tell us where you are, Dr. Jackson,” General Hammond recommended.

“Suppose I don’t. Is DJ there?”

“I’m here.”

“Started going through the tremors yet, DJ? You should be about due any time, shouldn’t you? And they get worse when there’s three of us, don’t they? I know you really hate those shakes. So why don’t you just slide on through to the next reality?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” DJ challenged, but there was terror in his eyes. “Then all you’d have to do is kill Daniel, and you’d have this world all to yourself.”

“Only if I can pass, and I can’t. You’ve got the journals. This Daniel likes to talk, but he’s not giving me nearly enough background to pass as him. Now you… Of course, this one has short hair. You’ll have to get a hair-cut before you can pass, and that won’t be any walk in the park for you, will it? Oh, and you’ll need a spine. Did you find that out already? This Daniel has a hell of a spine, I have to give him that. He goes on first contact missions. Loves ‘em. He’s been zatted, been on the receiving end of those damned Goa’uld hand-devices, declared dead more than once… Now how are you going to manage to grow a spine in the little time you have left?”

General Hammond grimaced. “Dr. Jackson, what do you hope to accomplish by all this? You’re an intelligent man. I know that much about you. You’ll be going through the tremors soon, and eventually they will kill you, if you stay. You only have two options. To give yourself up to us and leave through the Quantum Mirror, or kill both our Daniel Jackson, and DJ. And you can’t reach DJ as long as he’s safe with us. So make your choice, son, but chose carefully.”

There was laughter on the line. “You’re operating under a number of false assumptions, General.”

“And what are they?”

“First, that I am not to be trusted. Second, that DJ is. Third, that I really care all that much about whether I live or not. Fourth, that your Daniel is still alive as a bargaining chip. Fifth, that you have any idea what I’m really after. Sixth, that I can’t get to DJ any time I want to. I could go on.”

“The only one I’m interested in right now is whether my Daniel Jackson is alive. Is he?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?”

“I would if you let me speak to him.”

“Well, I would, but he had a little accident with the zat. Maybe we’ll call back later. Sleep well, DJ, knowing that I’m out here with your only ticket to the good life, and neither one of us is in reach.”

The line went dead, and Sam shook her head. “They couldn’t get a trace, sir. They’re somewhere in the state, that’s all.”

DJ sat like stone, staring at the phone. 

Jack studied the man a moment. “He was daring you to come out and face him, wasn’t he?”

DJ let out a long sigh. “Yes.”

“And then what? A show down? Quickest zat-gun wins?”

“Something like that.”

“Well? Don’t just fall into a coma, talk to us! Where is he? What’s he planning? How do we find him before he finds you?”

DJ shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well think!” Jack roared, and the other man jumped. Daniel never jumped. Jack had never, even from the first, been able to intimidate Daniel. It was as if it rolled off his back, like water off a duck. Intimidation just did not affect Daniel. Not from him, Teal’c, Goa’ulds, ugly big scaly bug-eyed alien monsters, anything. And Jack had never even noticed that fact until DJ had walked in, timid, scared of his own shadow… Maybe Dr. Jackson’s crack about growing a spine had some truth to it. 

Another thing Daniel had never, ever done was give up without a damn good fight. “Damn it, DJ, you’re the only line we have on Dr. Jackson. He has to get to you first, or it won’t matter what he does to Daniel, and he’ll need Daniel in order to deal with us. So how is he going to get to you? How do we stop him?” 

“I don’t know!” DJ cried back. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? You’re the only thing standing between me and that murderer. I know that. And you’re only protecting me in case I can lead you to Dr. Jackson and Daniel. In fact… if I told you I wanted to go back through the Mirror, right now… would you let me? Or would you keep me here? Because as soon as I leave this reality, there’s no longer any reason for Dr. Jackson to keep Daniel alive, and every reason to kill him.”

Jack and the General exchanged glances. The General said, “Do you want to go, son?”

DJ lifted those dark, beautiful eyes, to Jack. But the man had such a defeated look. It was shocking and unsettling to those who knew another version of this man. “No. No… He wouldn’t stand a chance if I left. But I still don’t know what Dr. Jackson is planning. Honestly, I don’t.”

Sam considered. “It could be as simple as a Quantum version of chicken,” she suggested. “To see which one of you can stand the entropic cascade tremors the longest before giving up and leaving.”

DJ shuddered, but it wasn’t tremors starting. “You make it sound so simple. You can’t have any idea what they’re really like, or you wouldn’t even suggest it. Even Dr. Jackson isn’t that cold-blooded. It doesn’t matter how much spine he has. And anyway, what good would that do him if he can’t get to the journals? You’d still be able to tell he wasn’t your Daniel.”

“So we’re back to square one,” Hammond gave the bottom line. “We have DJ and the journals, but Dr. Jackson has our Daniel. And the only thing we can do is sit and wait until someone makes the first move.”

Å 

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Daniel said, “where are we going?”

“Nowhere special.”

“Why?”

Dr. Jackson smiled. “That depends. If I’m going to kill you, I want to make sure the body is never found, don’t I?”

“You’ve got a zat gun. Three shots and there’s no body to trouble you. So what’s the explanation if you don’t want to kill me?”

“Then I don’t want DJ getting near either one of us, which means staying away from your friends in the SGA.”

“SGC.”

“Whatever. Staying all night in one place was a risk, but I had to take it.”

“So you’re just going to wait him out, and see who blinks first?”

“No. He’s going to come and meet us.”

“He is.”

“That’s just what I said. He is.”

“Why?”

“That depends. If I’m going to kill you—“

“Assume you’re not going to kill me. Then why?”

“He needs to get to both of us if he wants to stay. He’ll come.”

“But come where? How does he know where you’ll be?”

“I already told him.”

“You did?”

“You were listening, weren’t you?”

That shut Daniel up for a moment, while he worked it out. “He needs a haircut to look like me… a walk in the park… The barbershop on the Maple Street promenade. There’s a park across the way. After the first entropic cascade tremor.”

“See? We even think alike.”

“You think DJ will get the message? What if they won’t let him off the base?”

“He’ll find a way. In case you haven’t caught up yet, the wimp is a slimy, two-faced traitorous little weasel who’d sell his own mother for the price of a hot meal. He sold out his Earth, along with the only person who has ever meant anything to him, and probably a couple of other worlds on the way, just to save his own skin.”

“Mind explaining to me why you’ve made it your mission to stop him?”

Dr. Jackson glanced at Daniel, then quickly away again. “Actually, I do mind. It would be too much to ask you to shut up for a while, wouldn’t it?”

“You can always zat me and toss me in the trunk.”

“Yeah, I could.”

“Why did you lie about that, by the way? You said you zatted me. Why?”

“That depends—“

“Never mind.”

“Come on, Daniel. I know you have questions, you’re curious… but it’s not that tough. You’re a bright boy. Figure it out yourself.”

Daniel ignored the blatant challenge in his other self’s voice, the slightly sneering self-mockery in his tone. It occurred to him that Dr. Jackson didn’t have a lot of respect for any Daniel Jackson. Daniel was pretty sure he knew why. Someone picked up a shovel and helped bury a dead nine-year-old. After that, it would be very hard to have any respect, certainly no affection, for the accomplice to murder, even if he hadn’t gone on to other repugnant acts in order to survive past the age of eight… Better not to think about that. Figure the rest of this puzzle out, instead. 

“All right. Neither one of you can go home to your own realities. There’s nothing to go home to, probably no way to get there. You need to find a new one with a very narrow set of characteristics. There has to be a working Stargate, so they either have the Quantum Mirror, or you can reach Earth from P3X233. And Earth has to have survived. Either Apophis and the System Lords never attack Earth, or the attack fails. And you need an Earth where I’m dead.”

“I’ll give that a B minus. You missed a few things, and didn’t take your conclusions far enough.”

“Really?”

“Really. There are a lot of realities where they get the Stargate up and running without us, but the first place they go, the only place they have to go, is Abydos. And Abydos means Ra, and either they kill Ra or they run home to Mommy and bury the Stargate so they can hide their heads up their asses. If Ra survives, he knows where we are and comes calling. And if Ra is killed, sooner or later the Goa’uld come looking for us. And there is no reality, not even one, where Earth survives that attack without you.”

Well, actually, Daniel did know of one, but technically they did have his help in calling the Asgard, so… He didn’t say anything, because he doubted the Samantha and Kawalsky of that reality would thank him for sending this Dr. Jackson to them.

“And sometimes even you can’t save them. DJ couldn’t. But then, he’s a major screw-up. Therefore, Daniel Jackson, there is no Earth that survives without you being a living, active part of the SGC. And even those are rare on the ground. In fact, so far, we’ve only found three. Out of hundreds, maybe thousands of realities that fit all the other requirements.”

Daniel blinked. “And you can’t share, with DJ, or the resident Daniel.”

“No. I was lucky enough to find the first. It was perfect. Not only were you alive to save Earth from Apophis, but then you did the decent thing and got yourself permanently dead before I arrived.”

“That was nice of me.”

“I thought so. Of course, I seriously pissed the Stargate folks by refusing to fit into their Daniel-shaped void and join them, but I wanted my own life back. Everything was going fine until…“

“Until DJ arrived.”

“Exactly. He thought he had the edge, too, because the SGC folks felt sorry for him, the little wimp. Jack practically melted into his arms. Well, DJ was ready to be ‘their’ Danny boy again, why wouldn’t they want him? Trouble was, just because the SGC preferred him to me didn’t mean they’d toss me on my ear. So the little weasel tried to kill me! We both went into tremors – that reality didn’t belong to either of us. Jack got caught in the cross-fire when DJ came at me… so much for DJ’s loyalty to Jack and his shadows. So their Hammond rounded us up and tossed us both out. The second possible world I came across after DJ had been and gone. He killed their Daniel Jackson, almost got caught, and had to run for it. Then I stumbled in, and… I barely got out of there in one piece. And then comes number three. Your reality.”

“With me still in it. I hope you don’t expect me to do the decent thing.”

Dr. Jackson smiled crookedly. “No. But then, my requirements have undergone some revisions.”

“Such as?”

“I’m willing to settle for a world that isn’t Earth. A nice, quiet backward place where a man of my intelligence and resources can make himself a local king, maybe even a God. But I have two problems. One…”

“You don’t know any Stargate addresses that fit. You’ve never been a member of the SGC. You’ve never seen my journals.”

“And the only person who might be inclined to tell me is a lying, traitorous, murdering son of a bitch I wouldn’t trust to give me the correct time of day.”

“You could ask me.”

“How do you know I don’t mean you?”

Daniel shut up at that.

“My other problem is DJ. I’m willing to let him go his way in peace, but I know he doesn’t feel the same about me. He sees me as direct competition for the only thing he has ever really wanted. A deadly threat. And because he does, that’s just what I am.”

Daniel shook his head. “That sounds suspiciously like a line from an old Western. This cosmos isn’t big enough for the both of you.”

“For the three of us. Try going through entropic cascade tremors even once, and you’ll realize there is nothing you wouldn’t do if it meant you’d never have to go through them again. So. While I may be willing to settle on something less than Earth and my old life, DJ isn’t. You see, he has one more requirement I don’t have.”

“And that is?”

“Jack O’Neill.”

“Pardon me?”

“Jack O‘Neill has to be alive and well and… receptive.”

For two beats of his heart, Daniel truly didn’t realize exactly what Dr. Jackson meant. Then…

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” 

“No.” Daniel could feel his whole body stiffen in denial. “No. Not a chance. Not this Jack O’Neill. Not receptive. Not in any way.”

“You think not?” Dr. Jackson challenged, amused. “Beware, Danny-boy. Methinks you doth protest too much. Besides, once DJ starts to work on him, your Jack hasn’t got a prayer.”

“That’s ridiculous!” 

“Is it? Daniel, I’ve seen the little weasel at work. How the hell do you think he survived the Major? You picked up the brass table lamp, I picked up the shovel, while DJ… You think he let the hell get beaten out of him every night for eight, ten years? None of us are that dumb. Not when he came out of it with that pretty, unmarked face and that long student hair, he didn’t. And now he knows how to use them to get exactly what he wants. So how pathetic is that?”

“I don’t understand,” Daniel said softly.

“Oh come on. You must know the psychology of abuse. With our history, we have a morbid fascination with the subject. The victim often tries to gain the abuser’s favor, any kind of favor. And they keep looking for replacements all their life. When DJ went looking for love, he looked in all the wrong places. And he found it in the SGA, with another tough-as-nails military honcho. A macho protector. The one guy tougher, meaner, harder, better than the Major.”

Daniel felt a chill seep into his bones. Could that be me? A pathetic statistic of abuse? Looking for a way to repeat a traumatic history?

Dr. Jackson grinned and gave a cold chortle. “You too, eh, Daniel? Getting all hot and bothered about a guy who can bend you over like a twig? Watch he doesn’t break that spine you got.”

But just thinking of Jack and the Major in the same breath was ludicrous. The two were nothing alike. Nothing. In fact, Daniel vividly remembered the first time he met Jack O’Neill. The Colonel had been hard, cold, made of ramrod iron. But even so, Daniel had sensed that integrity and honor ran all the way through the man. He had seen the darkness of tragedy in him, too, a pain so intense it froze over like a glacier. Maybe it took one sufferer to recognize another. Anyway, Daniel could never take the Colonel’s threats or his beetling brow seriously, even from the first. And at his worst, most hair-trigger, knee-jerk, shoot-first commando worst, Jack would never, ever, raise his hand to a child. He had seen that on Abydos and ever since, time and time again. 

“I’m not looking for a replacement Major. If I was, I wouldn’t find him in Jack. I’ll buy tougher, harder and better than the Major, but meaner? You must be talking about an alternate Jack O’Neill.” 

“Oh, you have got it bad, haven’t you? But you never made a move, did you? No, I thought not. Well, it’s too late now. DJ’s got him. He’ll play your Jack like a violin, the way he does all of them. He’ll go into that poor little archeologist lost routine, and Jack will dissolve into a big messy puddle. And I mean that quite literally. Happens every time.”

“Every time?”

“You don’t have a very good grasp on this alternate realities thing, do you? How the range of possibilities work?”

“And you do?”

“Experience, Danny. And, oddly enough, there’s math involved.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Okay. Infinite possible presents propagating from the Big Bang on, all operating under the laws of chaos and random chance. But within chaos and the throwing of the dice, there’s a scary kind of order, a range of what is possible. Sometimes the range is really narrow, sometimes it’s really wide.

“Of course, the only ones we can even look at are realities that splay out from the moment some nameless ancient alien creates the Quantum Mirror. In most of those realities, there is no humanity. Given that there is an Earth, life comes down the path that leads to us once in a gazillion times. I actually saw one Earth where little intelligent dinosaurs were bouncing around in leather shorts. Freaked me right out. But in that stream of possibilities where there’s a Mirror that can look on a universe even marginally recognizable as ours, possibilities become narrower.

“Earth that fell under Goa’uld rule in ancient Egypt, then rebelled and escaped it, burying the Stargate. And what a long-shot *that* was! Catherine’s father happening to dig it up again, then getting the US government to experiment on it. Catherine finally talking someone into funding the revival of the project. Once the Stargate is opened, which doesn’t always happen, Earth stands or falls on whether you are part of the project. But it isn’t just you. Sam’s got to be there. Luckily, she always is. If there’s a project, she’s on it. Long hair or short, military or civilian, married to Jack or not, she’s there. That’s one of those immutable laws. Got it so far?”

“Okay. Narrowest range of possibility. What about Teal’c?”

“Teal’c… that’s your big Jaffa friend, right? First Prime of Apophis just about everywhere else. I don’t know how you managed that, but it’s never happened in any other reality I’ve been to, I can tell you that much.”

“Okay, so Teal’c has a narrow range of possibilities too. I thought the big guy was just waiting for a good enough excuse to turn on his false god. But maybe he never got it, unless we show up on Chulak just when we did. Us, but mainly Jack.”

“Ah yes, we come to Jack O’Neill. And don’t we always?”

Daniel considered a comment, but anything he said to that would be a mistake, so he kept his mouth shut.

“So here’s the math on Jack. First of all there’s his son Charlie. If Charlie lives, Jack lives happily ever after with his wife and kid, and never even hears about the Stargate. In the realities where Charlie dies, there’s a good proportion, maybe eighty percent, where he doesn’t last to get General West’s order. He gets a mouth-full of the same gun that killed Charlie.”

Daniel winced. “How many other realities have you *been* to?”

Dr. Jackson ignored that. “So if Jack does get the call to report to the base, and goes on the first mission, almost always he follows the order. He blows up Abydos, Ra, and himself. And the realities where he doesn’t? Either you have to be there or Sam does, to talk him out of it. And remember, you can’t always do that. DJ couldn’t stop him, although at least Jack was willing to come back to Earth before the bomb went off. But then, DJ used sex to pull that off. So do the Sams. How you managed it, I don’t know.”

Daniel knew the answer, but didn’t feel much like sharing it. He dragged Jack into that village, made him meet those people he would otherwise have blown to hell and back, and that connection forced him to recognize he had a responsibility not just to obey orders, but to protect the innocent. And somewhere along the line, Jack had decided to deal with life again. Of course, Daniel taking a staff blast for him might also have had something to do with it, but…

“So. Do the math. Even granting that there are an infinite number of possible realities… How often is it they unbury the Stargate in the first place? How often is it they need to get you on board to open it? How often are you alive when they come calling? How often have you screwed up your career and life to such a degree that you have to say yes when Catherine offers you that job, obviously fronting for the military – when that means having to deal with a bunch of Majors all over again? And if you get to ground zero, how often is it Jack manages to hang on long enough to get sent on the Abydos mission with you? It’s math. Resolve for the unknown, and it begins to look like a miracle that it all adds up to this little piece of heaven you have here.”

“So much for fate, destiny and determinism.”

“And let’s hear it for free will. Actually, to me, it looks more like a staged bob-sled run. You set up the sled, give it a push, and it has to go down the chute. It’s just that every so often the chute stops, and you have to set it up again in a new chute. And that’s where the choice frames what that reality is going to be. And here’s something that will really blow you mind, Daniel Jackson. That range of possibilities? Narrowest for Sam and your Teal’c, fairly wide for Jack? It’s an absolutely chasm for us. You, me, DJ… some Daniels who are barely recognizable as any of us. And the event that makes the difference, given a reality where our parents die and Nick walks out on us, the defining moment in our lives, is the night we live or die based on whether we fight, run, or bend over and give up. It bends, twists or breaks everything about us from that night on.”

Daniel swallowed on a dry throat. “This is hardly news.”

“Maybe not,” granted Dr. Jackson. “But the range still operates. Reality is splintering as we speak. Even now, here, between you and me, us and DJ. The bob-sled is out of its track, waiting for us to slot it back in for the next run. Which way are you going to jump, Daniel? Which way will I, or DJ?”

How many times *had* his other self gone through the Mirror? How many realities weren’t good enough, how many chances had he lost to find a home, how few did he calculate might be left? And how desperate was he, or the unknown DJ, to take the only one left that was even close?

Suddenly, Daniel decided he should get a lot more serious about getting himself out of this mess. Somehow.

Å 

At first, Jack thought the office was empty. But the airman was standing outside, so DJ had to be inside. “DJ. You here?”

“Jack. Yes. I’m here. What is it? Have they called again?”

He was sitting on the floor, wedged into the corner, in the dark, sounding vaguely groggy.

“No. No calls. But ol’ Doc Fraiser wants you in the Infirmary pretty soon. Just… as a precaution. It’s coming down to the wire.”

“The tremors.” DJ sounded bleak, glancing at his watch. “Six-oh-three pm. There’s nothing she can do.”

“Carter suggested maybe you could duck out through the Mirror, come back in, and reset for another forty-eight hours.”

DJ took Jack’s offered hand and the lift up off the floor. But when Jack would have let go, DJ only clutched tighter, more desperately. The two men stood very close, very still, and Jack was all too aware of the other’s breathing, the familiar smell of a friend who was close as a brother to him, the stray gleam off his disconcertingly long hair, the way the muscles of his jaw worked under a smooth cheek.

DJ whispered. “You would trust me, to come back?”

Suddenly, Jack was feeling a little breathless himself, a little flushed

“Oh, I know you’ll come back.”

“How do you know, Jack? After what Dr. Jackson said… what if he’s right? What if I’m everything he says I am, that I’m the murderer, not him, that I want your Daniel dead so I can slip into his place? All I have to do is stay away long enough for them to fight it out – and Dr. Jackson is not used to losing, at anything. You toss him out, and… I have nothing to lose, after all, and everything, everything to gain…” The man’s voice was soft, urgent, his breath hot on Jack’s neck. “So how do you know I’ll come back to help you stop it?”

His eyelashes were ridiculously long, silky, like his hair, like his cheek. Jack had to clench his fist tight to avoid reaching out to touch what he shouldn’t have. He gave the other a cocky grin he was far from feeling. 

“Because you can’t stay away from me. Come on. Infirmary.”

Å 

An area had been cleared in the middle of the Infirmary, and two airmen wheeled in a dolly with a crate on it. They tipped it onto the floor, where it landed with a heavy thud. Siler took a crowbar to pry off one wall of the crate, and he and the airmen took the panel to lean against the wall. Inside was a lump of naquadah that looked raw, un-worked, except for the dull gray surface in the center. 

The Quantum Mirror. 

Sam and Dr. Fraiser studied the Mirror, and Teal’c stood quiet, off to the side, his staff-weapon in his ready hands. Sam held the control device DJ had brought with him, playing with the tuning mechanism. When Jack and DJ came in, she gave them both a close look, then dragged her attention back to the device.

“That all, Major?” asked Siler.

“We’ll only need it for an hour or so. Then you can take it to the Gate room.”

“Sorry, Major, can’t do that. Nowhere to put it. The Gate room is stuffed with supplies for the Alpha site. So’s most of corridor C for that matter. Won’t be all cleared through the Gate until tomorrow.”

“Well you can’t leave that thing here,” Dr. Fraiser objected. “It’s in the way. I may need the space if we get an emergency.”

“All right then, we’ll leave it in a storeroom for the time being.”

“Has to be somewhere secure,” Jack threw into the discussion. “We don’t need any more tourists coming through.”

Sam shook her head. “The brig won’t do. Doors aren’t wide enough to get the crate through.”

“How about level eleven?” DJ suggested. “The old SAC command stations? They’ve got big steel doors on them. Only open from the outside.”

They all turned to stare at the visitor. He blinked back at them. “What? This base doesn’t have them?”

“Yes, it does,” Jack affirmed. “It’s just… we forgot you would know this place as well as Daniel. Better, even. Come back in an hour, airmen, and take this thing to the old command center on level eleven.”

“Sir.” Siler and both men left the Infirmary.

Jack watched Sam study the small triangular control device in her hands. “Dr. Jackson have one of those too?”

DJ nodded. “It was the first thing we did after we escaped from his Alpha base and got to his P3X233. Looked for a lab that had another controller on the table in view. Which also meant a reality where the SGA, if it existed at all, had probably not got around to it yet.”

Sam frowned at the device. “I’m having trouble getting this thing to focus in on any one reality.”

“There’s a knack to it,” DJ said, taking the offered object and easily spinning the dials. “Takes practice. I’ve had a lot of it. What reality are you looking for?”

“One where the Mirror is still on P3X233,” Sam answered. “Should be safe enough.”

DJ nodded and quickly dialed one. There was a chalk mark on the side of the alien lab table visible on the other side.

“What is that?” Dr. Fraiser asked, pointing.

DJ smiled faintly. “Traveling through the Quantum Mirror is a lot like traveling through a maze. Dr. Jackson and I both got into the habit of… marking the trail. I’ve already been to that reality, and the Stargate wouldn’t open on Earth.”

Now that they knew, it was clearly the Stargate pyramid origin symbol for Earth, with a circle around it and a line through it. No Earth here.

Dr. Fraiser checked her watch. “Ten minutes, Sam.”

Sam nodded. “DJ, we think we may be able to reset the time between tremors by sending you out and then back in again through the Mirror. Even a few minutes in another reality should be enough so that when you come back, you’re on the forty-eight-hour clock again. But we want you to stay there for five full minutes. Do you understand?”

DJ nodded. He handed the Mirror control back to Sam, and stared into the other world. His hands were shaking slightly.

“Okay, then. Whenever you’re ready.”

DJ nodded again, took a long breath, and reached to touch the Mirror. Instantly, he was on the other side, blinking back at them, checking his watch, even as Sam did. At five minutes, she beckoned him, and he came back through in a flashing instant. He glanced at Jack, leaning next to Teal’c, even as the Mirror shut down, going flat gray again.

Dr. Fraiser led him to a cot and made him lie down as she applied electrodes and monitors. He took off his glasses and set them on the stand by the bed.

Seconds ticked by, and DJ fought not to check his watch, sweat coming to his brow, his eyes shut closed, wrapping his arms protectively across his chest. “The waiting,” he said on a gasp of forgotten breath. “That’s always the worst.”

Sam silently counted down the seconds to zero. Then up from zero.

DJ blinked. “Isn’t… isn’t it time?” he asked. Pleaded. “I didn’t want to believe… I didn’t want to hope… We’ve passed the deadline, haven’t we? Sam, it worked!”

Sam wouldn’t say anything, watching the time tick on. 

Jack came forward with a grin, to help DJ sit up. “Told ya. Guess maybe my Carter’s better than yours, hunh?”

“Sir…” Sam tried to warn him, still tracking seconds.

“Don’t take those off just yet, DJ, please,” Dr. Fraiser recommended, taking his hand to prevent him ripping off electrodes or getting off the bed. She glanced at Sam. 

“But it worked!” DJ cried out in jubilation, in relief. “Don’t you realize what this means? I can stay here! It doesn’t matter how many other Daniels are here, I can stay, all I have to do is reset every two days. Diabetics have to get injections every day to live, and all I need is a few minutes with the Mirror. Jack! I can stay. Oh God, Jack… I hardly dared to hope… It’s been so long without any hope at all I’d ever come home, and I…”

Sam shook her head, unwilling to say anything, but she took Jack’s shoulder to pull him back. 

It began with a ripple at the surface of DJ’s skin. The joy that had brightened his face turned abruptly to horror as he grabbed the edges of the bed. 

“I was afraid of that,” Sam said. “It’s elapsed time, not a total reset.”

“Explain,” Jack demanded grimly.

“Each alternate Daniel has one clock running in this reality. Forty-eight hours until the first tremors. Going through the Mirror to some other reality only stops the clock, it doesn’t reset. When he comes back, it takes up exactly where it left off. Elapsed time. I’m sorry, DJ. Really.”

DJ might not have heard. They had witnessed the alternate Dr. Samantha Carter going through entropic cascade tremors, but nothing like this. The shuddering shifting multiple phasing of one form into many, as if even the body itself wasn’t sure which one it truly was… The tremors hammered at the body until the violent convulsions rocked him out of the bed, wrenching free the electrodes, and landing him on the floor, where he slammed and jolted like a landed fish fighting for life on dry ground. 

Janet ordered, “Help me get a pillow under his head, before he smashes his skull in. Teal’c, sit on him. Colonel, try and get this between his teeth!” Jack found himself holding the hilt of a closed jack-knife. Now how the hell had ol’ Doc Fraiser… but there was no time for speculation. He managed to wedge the hilt inside a head that blurred in shape because a lot of it wasn’t actually in the here and now. 

When it was over, DJ lay limp and sobbing on the floor. Teal’c gingerly removed himself from the young man’s chest. DJ reached out to Jack and pulled himself into an awkward embrace, his head on the Colonel’s lap. Jack reluctantly patted his head, tried to make soothing noises while he cried. 

Jack swallowed with difficulty. “I’m sorry, DJ. I am. We can’t make you go through that again. I sure as hell wish we didn’t have to, but… we have to ask you. Please. If you leave now, we have no way to reach Dr. Jackson, and no hope of getting our Daniel back alive. Please stay and help us.”

DJ shuddered as the last of the tremors wore away, sapping him of his remaining strength. He looked up into Jack O’Neill’s earnest face, and sighed. “I’ll stay. You were right, Jack. I can’t stay away from you…” Then he slipped sideways. Asleep. 

Jack picked him up with Teal’c’s help to put him back on the bed, while Janet checked him over. 

“Apart from a few bruises, he doesn’t seem to have taken any lasting physical harm,” Dr. Fraiser reported. “But the emotional affects… Those tremors are horrific, and all we had to do was watch.” 

But Jack had had enough. He simply could not stand there by that bed, looking down into that face, no matter which version it belonged to, and watch it go through any more pain. “I have to check on the search status,” he said, and strode out of the Infirmary. 

Sam, Teal’c and Janet all sighed at once. There really wasn’t any other comment that could be made.

“Okay,” Sam said bracingly, straightening her shoulders. “Teal’c, help me get the Mirror crated up, will you?”

They lifted the panel from the wall and carried it back to the Mirror.

“Wait a minute,” Janet said. “What’s that?”

Sam and Teal’c both followed her pointing finger to the inside surface of the wooden wall. There were chalk marks clearly visible, a sign-post aimed to anyone looking into this reality from another through the Quantum Mirror. Not the “No Earth here” symbol, this was a line of Egyptian hieroglyphs. An ancient and alien language long dead on almost every version of Earth, that only a very few could even read. 

“What does it say?” Sam asked.

Teal’c frowned. “It says, ‘Last chance. Double dare you.’” 

Å 

“Turn off here,” Dr. Jackson commanded, pointing to a dirt laneway off the road, losing itself in a dense stand of pines. It twisted up a steep incline, until all that could be seen was trees surrounding the lane. “Stop. Get out.”

Daniel could see no sign of a house, no sign there had been any vehicle through here since the last rain. He glanced curiously at the other. “Why here?”

“On your knees,” said Dr. Jackson, coldly. He pointed the zat with far more precision than any time since the kidnapping, at the center of Daniel’s torso. Just where it would hurt the most, he knew from far too much experience. 

I thought I wasn’t afraid, Daniel thought. “Why?”

The other chuckled. “Maybe because I want to see you on your knees in front of me. Down, now.”

Daniel obeyed, slowly. 

“Now crawl over to that tree. Hug it. That’s right.” Dr. Jackson took out the handcuffs and Daniel was held firm around the trunk of a pine. His captor remained standing, uncomfortably close to him, thigh almost grazing his cheek. He turned his head away, and Dr. Jackson chuckled.

“Since you don’t seem to be up on the latest literature on the lingering psychological effects of child abuse, let me brief you. One very common result is that the victim repeats the atrocities of the abuser on anyone in his power. Shit rolls downhill, Daniel. Or maybe I just resent the fact that you got off so light. Everything worked out for you, didn’t it, Danny? Everything here is perfect. No Major caging you in a living hell for eight years. An Earth that is alive and well and thriving. A wife who loved you, respected you. Maybe it doesn’t seem quite fair to me that I should be deprived of a life while you got lucky. Maybe, now that I’ve got my message to DJ and set my little trap, maybe I don’t need you anymore. So maybe this is where I put a bullet in your head in standard execution style. Or maybe I give you three quick zats. No pain, no evidence. So the only thing you have to worry about is whether I want you to drop your pants first.”

He brushed his thigh against the back of Daniel’s head. “So how do you feel about that? Your worst nightmare?”

Daniel swallowed, then straightened, and looked up into his own face. 

“Actually, no. My worst nightmare has to do with Goa’uld larvae. Me having sex with Daniel Jackson in a secluded spot? That’s a description of the way I’ve spent every Saturday night for the past four years.”

Dr. Jackson blinked. Then he threw his head back and laughed. “You really don’t intimidate at all, do you? Why the hell is that?”

Daniel tried to shrug, but it wasn’t easy, hugging that damn tree. “I guess I believe there will always be a brass table lamp, if I need one bad enough. You know the worst part of that night? I thought the Major would get up and come after us. And when I finally got Andy to the police station, the first thing they said they’d do was send us back.”

“Jesus.”

“So I grabbed a set of handcuffs, locked myself to a rail, swallowed the key, and started talking. I talked loud and long until they listened to me. So you see, handcuffing me like this just gives me incentive to use my mouth.”

Dr. Jackson grinned, and walked away, shaking his head. “More dangerous when he’s trapped. I should have known.”

He looked for something on the ground, but Daniel had no idea what. He tested a few spots with his foot, then glanced at his watch. He finally seemed satisfied, and settled himself down, picking up a piece of kindling that he brushed off. “Well, I’d wait on the talking, if I were you. I’m not going to be in any condition to listen for a bit.” 

He placed the chunk of wood in his mouth and bit down hard on it, curling himself into a fetal ball. 

And then the tremors struck.

Daniel couldn’t watch. He had seen this before, or thought he had. But he didn’t remember it being this bad, or lasting this long. It was almost ten minutes before Dr. Jackson rolled onto his back, panting, weakened, limp and covered with sweat.

The other crawled back to the car trunk, struggled to his feet, and reached into the trunk for a cooler Daniel didn’t realize was there. Inside were bottles of colas. Dr. Jackson greedily sucked one back, then opened another, only slowing down when he reached for the third. 

“Those damn shakes take a lot out of you,” he explained. “Sometimes you just have to pass out for a while. Mainlining sugar can help. They get worse, too, more violent, the more of them you’ve already been through. And the more Daniels are around. I made sure that little bastard came through before me, though, so he’d get hit before I did.”

“You knew he was already here.”

“Of course. I watched for him to come through. Then I waited. I set it up, timed to the second.”

“Why?”

“You really want to know?”

“I think I already do. It’s a trap. For him. With me as bait.”

“Almost, Danny. You’re part of the trap. You set it up, the life he really wants. But Jack is the real bait. Now you’re going to help me get rid of DJ, for once and for all, so I can get on with my life.”

“How is that?”

“I’ve already set it up. All I need to do is get you and DJ in the same place at the same time, in another four hours. That’s when the next attack is due. Then, no matter how the bob-sled runs, I win.”

“You expect him to kill me.”

“He’s got to try, at least. Or you kill him, although, given you and him, I think the math is against that one. In spite of the way you handled the Major, I don’t think you have the killer instinct, or the desperation and ruthless animal cunning our boy DJ has. So if he does get off the first shot, I can depend on your friends to make sure he doesn’t survive. Then, if they let me stay or kick me out, I still win. No more DJ on my back, no more looking over my shoulder. And, one way or another, the next SGA will give me the Stargate address I need to set up my new little empire.” 

“You told him you zatted me… you expect him to use a zat.”

“His weapon of choice. That should give you a fighting chance, at least, when he makes his move. Just fall and play dead when he nails you, and hope to hell he doesn’t try to disintegrate you then and there.”

“Thank you,” Daniel muttered as Dr. Jackson unlocked the handcuffs. If there was some ambiguity about what the thanks were for… he wasn’t feeling very grateful for either favor. 

“You’re welcome.”

“Well, that’s certainly one plan. But what if I can offer you another?”

“On your feet. Back in the car. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”

“I said I can offer you another plan.”

“You drive. By the way… That crack about your Saturday nights. You weren’t serious, were you?”

Daniel made an impatient noise as he turned the ignition and took the car into drive. He concentrated on his three-point turn to get out of the lane as a way to ignore the question.

“Jesus, Danny, they line up three deep to get at me. One line for the women, one for the men. You can’t tell me you don’t have the same problem.”

“You’re the one who can’t be serious,” Daniel retorted, keeping his eyes on the lane. “Left or right?”

“Right. We’re heading back to Colorado Springs. Well damn. Living like a monk? One of us? Even DJ manages to get action in every reality he finds, Jack notwithstanding. The delectable Samantha is always there, and without a Jack, is ripe fruit waiting to be picked. I’ve found ol’ Doc Fraiser to be very good company. In a crunch, we look up the dishy Major Davis. You have the big guy, the Jaffa, too. Ever thought of giving him the nod – and maybe something a little more interesting? All any of them need is a wink to come running, you know.”

Daniel clamped his jaw tight. “Yeah, right. Having fun, teasing me? I really, really think we should discuss alternatives to your big plan.”

Dr. Jackson laughed. “You don’t even own a mirror, do you?”

“If you’re trying to distract me, it won’t work. As I said. I can give you a way out that won’t involve any wild traps, or anyone getting killed.”

Dr. Jackson sighed. “Okay, I’ll listen. I don’t have much choice, stuck in this car with you.”

“It’s very simple. I can negotiate a truce between you.”

“Oh really.”

“I want you both out of my life, don’t I? You’ve already said you don’t have to have Earth. That should make it very easy to arrange a compromise. Once we get you settled somewhere, DJ can do whatever he likes, in whatever reality he likes.”

“Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Trust, Danny. Trust. Victims of child abuse never learn the knack of trust. How could they, when the person they’re supposed to trust the most violates that? DJ won’t trust me any more than I trust him, to abide by the deal. What if I can’t make a go of it in my chosen fiefdom? What if DJ finds his precious Jack, and then looses him again? What’s to stop either of us going back to the Mirror to try again? What’s to stop us coming back here to take another shot at you? Then we’re all back in the same box, looking over our shoulders, waiting for the next tremor to begin, waiting for that zat blast we never saw coming. Just like when we were kids, always looking over our shoulder for the next time that son-of-a-bitch came looking for us. No. None of us is willing to go back to that. We had a life once. A life without fear, without torture, some of us even had love, or the promise of love. Home. You really think any of us are willing to settle for less?”

Daniel didn’t want to acknowledge how much of that he saw in himself. 

He had told himself he was over the traumas of his childhood, that they had no hold over him. For a long time, he believed that. After all, he had recovered from the fractured skull, the broken bones, learned to walk again, grown out of the blackouts and nightmares. He and Andy had both had a lot of counseling both in the hospital and for a time after they were released. All the scars were on the outside, he thought. 

He had got on with his life. Learned to settle for foster homes that were just okay, because he knew, now, that there were worse places he might be sent. Learned not to mind being the outsider, nose pressed against the window looking in at a home he wasn’t going to have. And he had learned patience, to wait his time. When he grew up, he told himself, everything would be better. He would be in control, he would make himself a life and a home. 

Somewhere along the line, other things had got in the way of the urgency of that desire. He realized now that had been part of his healing process. Somehow, his goals stopped being about what he thought his parents would have wanted him to be, and became a genuine fascination in the work. His dreams stopped being about re-creating the idealized memories of a childhood home, and started to be about seeing into the ancient lives of people who were as real to him as those who walked the same streets he did. His natural imagination and curiosity carried him to places he never thought he could go. 

Like, for instance, Abydos. Where he suddenly found himself blind-sided by love. Oh, yeah. Love. Belonging. Home. Amid the glories of a culture he had lived and breathed in imagination for years. He had been so happy with Sha’re on Abydos… so incredibly, unbelievably, miraculously happy. Who said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too? 

The Goa’uld Apophis, for one. 

But life goes on. It has to. Things are tough all over and you find a way to live with the past, or ignore it. But when one door closes, if you’re real lucky, another opens. For Daniel, coming back to the SGC had been the life-line he had needed. And again, new goals, dreams, passions had driven out the old ones. He honestly thought he was okay. Well, maybe he was a little over-obsessed with revenge against the Goa’uld for ripping apart the one truly happy time in his adult life, stealing love and life and family and home from him for the second time… Which couldn’t be blamed on anything the Major had done to him. And maybe he was a little anxious about starting an affair with Jack… but apart from that, he thought he was fine. Until Dr. Jackson had suddenly shown up to give him a few lessons in the ways the past could reach out to the present and throttle you.

So just how crippled was he? Was his whole life an unconscious attempt to gain approval from the dead? Was his crush on Jack just a shadow of a scared boy who would do anything to make the pain stop? Was his reluctance to take a chance on love again a lesson he didn’t realize he had taken away, that forbade trust? 

Oh hell, Daniel, this is not the time to psychoanalyze the hell out of yourself. If you get out of this, spend an afternoon with Teal’c in kel-no-reem and get through it there. Right now, you’ve got to survive. And in the absence of a brass table lamp, that leaves your mouth. Got to be good for something. 

“Okay. You said it was all about the math. We’re talking about infinite realities, here. You can get very, very lost in all of that. And the more time passes, the more realities splinter off, the more lost you’ll be. So why do you have to trust him, anyway? The chances of either of you happening across each other again would be… unreal. All you have to do is keep to the realities without Jack, and DJ has no reason even to look for you.”

“Unless he can no longer help himself. Unless I’m a burr under his belt that won’t go away, and he thinks he can never have what he wants while I still exist. Unless he wants revenge.”

“How do you know? You’re projecting, aren’t you? It’s how you think of him. Maybe you’re more alike than you want to think.”

Dr. Jackson shook his head. “Maybe. Why do you care, anyway? Not your responsibility, Daniel.”

“I think maybe it is. In the grand scheme of things, maybe I owe you. Both of you. For showing me how bad it could have been.”

“The grand scheme of things? Where the hell did you get that from?”

“It’s something Catherine, an alternate Catherine, said to me, just before she died, helping me save my Earth.”

“Yeah, well, no offense, but Catherine Langford can be… almost as drippy as you, Daniel.” 

“Look,” Daniel tried again. “Just let me talk to DJ. I can get through to him. I think you know I’m the one person who can.”

Dr. Jackson smiled. “You are persuasive, I must admit. But you don’t know the little weasel. I once made the mistake of thinking we were alike, because, at some level, we were the same person. I was wrong. Don’t make the same mistake, Daniel, or he will kill you. Fair warning. That’s the only one you’ll get from me.“ 

Å 

Sam poked her head into the commissary, and found Teal’c there. “Where’s the Colonel?” she asked him.

“He is overseeing the attempt to locate Danieljackson and Dr. Jackson.”

“No. He isn’t. I just checked the operations room. He isn’t there. I can’t find DJ, either.”

“He is not in the Infirmary?”

“He woke up about a half hour ago. Dr. Fraiser sent him back to the VIP suite. He isn’t there now. He isn’t in Daniel’s office. Teal’c, I don’t want to make a noise here… it might be embarrassing to… but I think we better find them.”

“For what reason?”

Sam frowned. “I’m not sure. I just… I don’t trust DJ. He wants the Colonel, that’s clear enough. But how much? Enough to want to get rid of Daniel, any way he can? Like, for instance, letting Dr. Jackson kill him? I just… I just think it would be a mistake, right now, for the Colonel to let DJ get too close. And the Colonel may be more susceptible than he realizes.”

“I am not certain you are correct, Major Carter,” Teal’c objected. “I believe O’Neill is well aware of who is and who is not our Danieljackson. But I do not believe DJ should be allowed to wander at will in any case. Where is the airman assigned to watch him?”

“I don’t know. No one’s seen airman Kelly for a while either.”

“That is alarming information.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so. Help me find them?”

“I will, Major Carter.”

Sam grinned thankfully at her team-mate as he rose at once to join her.

She was lucky, she knew, to have the privilege of working with men she could rely on absolutely, trust with her life and anything else she valued. But jeez, Janet was right. It wasn’t fair. Here she was, working day in and night out with three of the most gorgeous guys in the known universe, and even after five years, two of them wouldn’t even call her by her first name, while the other might as well be her little brother. It just wasn’t fair. Oh well. One of these days, she promised herself, she was going to get Teal’c alone in a dark corner and plant one right on his full, luscious lips. And if four solid years of repressed desire and unrequited lust all released at once and aimed straight at his gorgeous body did not melt every rivet in his armor and rip the cover off the seemingly-impervious Jaffa, then she would give up in disgust and play for the other team. 

Å 

On level eleven, DJ checked warily to make sure the corridor was empty before he made his way quietly to a locked door near the end. But as he neared his destination, Jack was suddenly there, leaning casually against the wall. 

“DJ.”

“Jack!”

“Watcha doin’?”

“I… I didn’t see you there.”

“I notice airman Kelly is missing. How’d you manage that?”

“Kelly was ordered to report to the front gate. I don’t know why. Were… were you looking for me, Jack?” There was wistful hope in the man’s voice. He drew nearer to the Colonel, smiling gently. “Because I was looking for you.”

“On level eleven? Near the old command center? Where we put the Quantum Mirror?”

DJ looked around him, blinking. “No, Jack. You didn’t think… No! I wouldn’t run out on you! I couldn’t. Not this time.”

“Then watcha doin’ here?”

“I’m not near the Mirror. I’m near the old electrical transformer room. The high level of electrical interference fogs up the security cameras. I used to meet my Jack… I guess I came for old time’s sake. I know this level very well. I thought... I hoped…”

“We need to have a talk. A very private talk.”

DJ smiled, eyes half-lidded and smoky. “That, too.” DJ followed readily as Jack led him into the transformer room, where the hum of electrical current roaring through the heavy machinery, and the stray release of energy, raised all the hair on the backs of their necks. DJ’s color heightened, his breathing thickened and grew harsh as Jack closed the door behind them. Then he reached out to take Jack in an embrace… to meet a hand braced on his chest, holding him back. 

“Jack? I know you said you weren’t with anyone, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want someone. I can see it in your eyes. You want me. I know it. I feel it. God, Jack, I’ve prayed for nothing else for… how many realities? I’ve lost track. Please. I need you.”

Was it his imagination, that the hand planted on his chest trembled? Oh yes, please God. He placed his own hand over Jack’s, to warm the flesh. And he pushed closer. 

“One kiss, Jack. Just one. Then you’ll know. If it’s not me, if it’s not even your Daniel, then you’ll know. Isn’t that what you want? To know?”

Slowly, the hand relaxed, gave ground. DJ pressed in, until finally, finally, his lips touched Jack’s. He put everything he had into that kiss: the love, desire, passion, the fear, longing and frustration, the desperation and need. Everything he was went into that kiss. Although the Colonel held stiff and cold for the first moment, slowly he yielded. His lips warmed and moved, just about to part to let an insistent tongue inside…

The zat sizzled through the air around them both. But only Jack slid to the floor, unconscious. 

“I’m sorry, Jack,” DJ whispered, a hand to his lips, still tingling, as much from the promise of passion cut off as the backwash residual energy from the zat because he was so near. He collapsed the weapon and slipped it in the back of his belt. “I’m truly sorry. But I have to do this. I’ll be back soon, and then I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

He dragged Jack to the old SAC Command room, where Air Force officers had once sat with little brass keys and books of codes, waiting to unleash Armageddon on the world. He leaned Jack tenderly against the crated Mirror, next to the unconscious airman Kelly, and left, careful to shut the big heavy door behind him. 

Moments later, a banging on the inside of that same door brought help. It was Carter and Teal’c. Jack knew, somehow, that it would be.

“Sir!” Carter managed to invest just that one supposed mark of respect with all the reproach and deep disappointment he could bear. As if she knew… oh hell, of course she did. Brain the size of a planet, remember? And Teal’c? The big Jaffa was looking particularly forbidding as they released him. 

“Knock it off, both of you. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Word of honor. Although what business it is of yours…”

“DJ?” Sam cut him off ruthlessly.

“He’s on his way up the escape ladder. Used the hatch at the end of the corridor. He really does know this place, doesn’t he? Anyway, that was supposed to be the plan, wasn’t it? Let him escape, and follow him to the rendezvous? Isn’t that the usual drill? I had to make it look real, didn’t I?”

He wasn’t sure they were buying it. He wasn’t sure he bought it himself. That had certainly been his intention when he came in here… Jesus, he only hoped Daniel could kiss half as well.

“Then this Daniel Jackson succeeded in over-powering you because you allowed it?” Teal’c observed with an unholy Jaffa-like gratification.

“Okay, so we’re even. Let’s both forget it ever happened, okay? Carter, check airman Kelly to make sure she’s all right. And see if she’s still got her side-arm.”

“Her side-arm, sir?”

“I have a feeling DJ may have taken it and put it in his pocket. He wasn’t *that* glad to see me. So. Any ideas where he’s going?”

“I was thinking about that, sir. I think the best bet is the park on the Maple Street promenade, across from the barbershop, down from the Body Shop.”

O’Neill frowned at her. “How do you…” Oh yeah. Brain the size of a planet. “Never mind. Let’s get out of here.”

Å 

Daniel sat awkwardly behind the steering wheel, wrists cuffed behind his back, in the latest of a series of stolen cars. They were parked in the ally by the barbershop, waiting. 

Since this was after ten at night, the downtown was deserted. A few street lights had burned out and not been replaced, adding to the dense shadows around the trees and bushes in the park surrounded by low-rise office buildings. No one passed by. No shoppers, no joggers or people walking their dogs, not even a beat cop or a street-person looking for a place to sleep. Even if he got the chance, and shouted his lungs out, there was no one around to hear him. Undignified as it was, he might give it a try anyway. If dignified meant anything to him, he would never have announced to a stodgy archeological community what he really thought about the pyramids. 

It had occurred to Daniel that with enough time, Sam could have figured out his alternates’ code and guessed where the show-down might take place. But he could see no sign of any of his friends. Of course, they were trained by a paranoid military to take advantage of every possible cover, and you could hide an army in that park tonight, but still… He had to assume he was on his own. 

“Are you going to give me a weapon, at least?”

“Not yet. You might be tempted to use it on me.”

“Oh, more than tempted. But if you send me out there with my hands cuffed and no weapon, it’ll be murder. I thought you wanted me to have a fighting chance. I thought you didn’t care which of us does in the other.”

“I don’t. But I do care that neither of you gets a shot at me.”

Dr. Jackson checked his watch a couple of times, and seemed to get impatient.

“What are we waiting for? Why don’t you just shove me out there and watch him gun me down?”

“I expected him to be here by now.”

“You aren’t waiting for him to show himself, are you? Why would he do that, if he thinks you’ll try to kill him?”

“He’s going to have to do something. He’s got ten, maybe fifteen more minutes before the next tremors, and as soon as that happens, he’ll be loud and vulnerable, and he knows I can pick him off whenever I like. He’ll have to come out soon to flush us out into the open.”

“Why do I get the impression you’ve done this before?”

“You were never a Marine. We’re real big on tactics and strategy in the Marines. Wait. O ye of little faith. There he is.”

A lone man walked casually to the middle of the park and the bench. He sat down, his hands folded in his lap, one leg crossed on the other. He called out, “I’m here, Dr. Jackson. Let’s get this over with, shall we?” 

“Let me talk to him,” Daniel begged. “I know you don’t think so, but I can reach him. We can find a solution. It doesn’t have to come to this.”

Dr. Jackson smiled and gestured to the door. “Go ahead then. Give it a try.”

Daniel swallowed, then took up the dare. It was difficult, working the door of the car with his hands cuffed like that, but he managed, and walked out into the street. 

DJ sat a little straighter, studying the new arrival. 

[“I see him sir,” Carter reported over her comm. “It’s our Daniel.”]

[“You sure?”]

[“Positive, sir. His hands are cuffed and he’s talking.”]

[“I see, Major. Any sign of Dr. Jackson?”]

[“None, sir.”]

[“Well, nobody’s shooting yet… Lucky I got that microphone on DJ. Everyone tuned in?”]

[“Yes sir.”]

[“I am also, O’Neill.”]

[“Good. At least we’ll get some warning if things start to go to hell. Let’s give it another minute or two and see if Dr. J. shows up. He’s got to be close. As soon as he shows, we zat everybody in sight, and sort them all out at the base.”]

[“Sir, we can’t do that. Remember what Dr. Jackson said over the phone? He zatted Daniel, less than ten hours ago, sir. We don’t know if Daniel will be able to survive another so soon.”]

[“Son of a bitch… all right. We zat the other two and kick their asses the hell out of here. Just be ready for my word.”]

“You’re Daniel,” the other said at once.

“Yes. And you’re DJ.”

“Where’s the oh-so-good Doctor?”

“Waiting for you to go into tremors again.”

“Bastard,” DJ said without heat. “He set this all up, you know.”

“I know.” Daniel ventured closer and sat on the bench next to… himself. “Dr. Jackson thinks it’s a case of you or him. But it doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t need a reality with an Earth in it. He told me so. He has an idea of playing God somewhere backward with easily-impressed people.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? As long as he isn’t in my reality. But that leaves you a lot of alternate universes he won’t even bother with. You aren’t even in competition, not really. All you need to do is declare a truce, and this is over.”

“Is it.”

“It can be.”

“Did you manage to convince him of that?”

Daniel fell silent, and DJ nodded. “I thought not. He was a Marine once, you know.”

“He told me.”

“I never could bring myself to trust those military types. Just way too paranoid, way too willing to suppress all thought processes in favor of orders, and way too ready to use violence like a hammer to put down all opposition. According to your journals, the early ones at least, you feel the same. Funny about one of us going that route. I would have thought he’d had enough of that from the Major.”

“He said the same thing about you. In reference to… Jack.”

“Oh yes. Jack.” DJ glanced at him. “You love him too, don’t you? No, I mean, you’re *in* love with him.”

Daniel could not answer, wondering… was Dr. Jackson right? Had this DJ done what he could not bring himself to do? Had he seduced Jack? All Daniel knew for sure was, there was no way he could ever ask.

“You know what I have to do,” DJ said quietly.

[“Goddamn it, Teal’c, shoot!” Jack growled out, watching the scene through his night-vision goggles from his cover inside the darkened barbershop. Which, at the moment, was just way too far away. He spoke into the walkie-talkie to his comrade positioned behind the empty stalls in front of the market.] 

[“I cannot,” Teal’c objected, carefully aiming a charged zat. “Danieljackson is in the way. If he did indeed take a zat blast today, I could kill him.”]

[Jack spat into the radio, “Carter. You get a clear shot, take it.”]

[“Yes sir. But I’m not close enough to be sure, sir. They’re too close together. I don’t want to kill Daniel either.”] 

Daniel nodded. “I know what you came to do. But I have to wonder why you haven’t done it already.”

“I need to take him out too, or it’s all for nothing. And I would have left you alone and gone my way in peace… except… Your Jack. He’s better than mine, you know.”

“I would have thought he’d be the same.”

DJ shook his head. “Mine blew an atomic weapon that killed everyone on Abydos. Without the least thought. Without even meeting them. Without caring a damn for the fact those people were innocent victims. Mine was a son-of-a-bitch who thought that every nasty thing he did was a bit of payback for the way the universe took his son away from him. A very... familiar son-of-a-bitch. Yours… Well, he’s better than mine. Better than any of them. I have to have him, Daniel.” He checked his watch.

“You won’t get him. Not if you do anything to harm me.”

“He’ll never know. There will only be one body. Dr. Jackson’s. And when I go past the next time limit without the tremors, everyone will assume it was Dr. Jackson who killed you, not me. And they’ll let me stay, because they love you. They need you. More than that, they respect you. Even the Jaffa gets all mushy about you.” DJ shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never been loved and respected like that. I’m sorry, Daniel. I really am. In a lot of ways, you’re a much better person than I am… But I have to have all of this. And all I need to do is step into your shoes.”

“Which you already seem to have done. And the rest of my clothes, I notice,” Daniel said dryly. “Those are my spare glasses, too, aren’t they?”

“We all keep an extra set around the office. Now be quiet for a minute, will you?” He stood up, and began to shake. He whirled, screamed, and pirouetted behind the bench, landing on the ground.

Daniel stood up. There was something wrong. This wasn’t entropic cascade tremors. It was a fake. But why?

[“Damn it, Daniel, get out of the way! Run for it!”]

[“He can’t, sir. It’s too late. Dr. Jackson is here.”]

[“Well get him, then!”]

[“Too late. No clear shot.”]

Dr. Jackson took the gap between the back of the bank and the park bench at a broken-field run. The good ol’ Marines… never thought he’d thank them for anything. But he had already discovered the big Jaffa hiding in front of the market, so there had to be others near as well. 

That idiot Daniel stood there in the open staring like a fish even as Dr. Jackson leapt over the last bush. He tackled his gaping target, knocked them both to the ground and used the other as a shield to stop the SGC personnel from shooting at him. Then he rolled, came up on one knee and aimed his zat toward the body convulsing in the shadows behind the bench.

But he saw the gleam of silver too late to dodge. The flash of gun-fire was the only notice he got. He went down with a cry, knowing that the hard punch he had felt go through his chest was a bullet.

“No!” he gasped. “The tremors… you’re in tremors…”

“There’s a way to delay them,” DJ said calmly, standing up over his other two versions, both lying helpless on the ground, one fatally wounded, the other hand-cuffed. “All I needed was five minutes.”

He aimed the revolver at Daniel.

“No!” cried Dr. Jackson. With his last strength, his face stretched in a grimace of hatred, he raised himself and hurled himself toward DJ. The second shot caught him in the neck and deflected just enough so it hit Daniel in the leg, not the head.

And before Dr. Jackson could reach his enemy, zat fire burst from two angles and gunfire from a third to catch the only Daniel Jackson standing. 

Daniel ignored the blood seeping from the wound in his leg, wriggling until he could get his hand-cuffed wrists in front of him. Then he dragged himself to Dr. Jackson, collapsed and panting on the ground, and took the other man into his arms.

“You okay?” Dr. Jackson gasped out, even as Jack, Sam, Teal’c and a couple of SFs ran into the park to surround him. Teal’c hesitated just a moment, to ensure that the third body was truly dead.

“I’m fine,” said Daniel quietly. “You?”

Dr. Jackson coughed out a chuckle. “Not so hot. Why the hell didn’t you get out of here when you had the chance? Why did you just stand there?”

“Just what I want to know,” Jack growled, promising much more of the same lecture later.

“That’s not real important right now, is it?” Daniel answered softly, holding tight. He could see the light fading from the blue eyes he saw in his own mirror every morning. “You saved my life. Thank you.”

“Yeah, well... it was an accident. I certainly didn’t mean to.”

“Thank you anyway.”

“I got you into this.”

“You didn’t have to get me out.”

“Yeah… yeah… I think I did. In the grand scheme of things… I think I owe you. Is he dead?”

“Yes,” Teal’c announced.

Dr. Jackson nodded, satisfied. Then he grimaced. “Oh damn… here it comes… good bye, Daniel Jackson. Have a good life. Live it for both of us.”

The tremors took Dr. Jackson hard and fast, splintering and reforming and shuddering him through too many realities at once. As if every one he had been through claimed a piece of him back. Daniel could feel the shuddering pull of it down to the bone, but only held tighter.

Then they were over. And Dr. Jackson was dead. Daniel wondered which reality had claimed the man as he died? Which one kept his soul? 

Jack looked away, toward the last body. Whatever sympathy he may have had for DJ went dead, cold and slammed into a deep hole the moment the bastard aimed a gun at Daniel. 

“Danny. Come on. Let go. He’s gone.”

“He’s dead, Jack,” Daniel said, his voice flat, his dark blue eyes glazed with disbelief.

“I know. It’s tough, I know, watching Daniel Jackson die.”

Daniel blinked, and at last, looked up at the man, the friend, holding his shoulders, waiting to help him to his feet. But getting up meant facing the other body on the ground. He supposed there would never be a way to tell if it had been the zats or Jack’s side-arm that had killed DJ. Whatever he might be experiencing right now, the rest of SG1 was under no confusion at all of exactly where their priorities lay. Extreme prejudice was not just a phrase this time.

“All they wanted was a home,” he said. “That’s all either of them wanted.”

“Yes, but they wanted to take it from you. And that’s just not going to happen. Wait a minute. Why are you… Damn it, Daniel, you’re shot!”

“Thanks, Jack, but I know already.”

“For crying out loud, why didn’t you say something?”

“Like, I’m shot? I thought it was pretty obvious. But it’s just a—“

“If you say it’s just a flesh wound, or you’re fine, I’m going to shoot you myself. Here, Teal’c, help me get him on the bench. Carter. Go get the van and bring it up here. Call Hammond. Get him to send a sweeper team to clean up the mess. The SFs will stay on guard till they get here. Then someone else can figure out what we do with all these… extras. Tell him to alert the Infirmary. Daniel’s coming in – again. Oh, and see if you can find any handcuff keys in there.”

Jack knelt in front of Daniel, his knife out to slash away the blue-jean leg so he could get a look at the damage. He smiled savagely when Daniel winced. “Serve you right,” he muttered. “When, when, are you going to learn to duck?”

“I’ll duck the next time. Promise. Damn. Just once, I wish it would be the left leg.”

Jack waited until Sam had gone to the unmarked van parked around the corner from the Body Shop, then he turned and said with forced casualness: “Oh, by the way… I suppose you can prove you’re really our Daniel?” 

Daniel smiled wanly. “Of course I can. The answer to Teal’c’s problem has come to me. Brass table lamp, Teal’c. Attractive and functional. You can always use another lamp, and there’s lots of versatility to a big brass table lamp with a nice solid base.”

Teal’c considered him, and the comment. “I believe I concur.”

“Much more use than that blue thing we looked at earlier. Although… I couldn’t help but notice it’s not in the shop window now.”

Teal’c permitted himself a smile. “No, Danieljackson. Indeed not. There may soon come a time for such a gift. I would like to be prepared.”

Jack permitted himself a sigh of relief. If Teal’c was that sure, it was good enough for him. “You guys want to let me in on the secret?”

“No, Jack, I don’t think so.”

There was something else Jack desperately wanted to know, but it, too, would have to wait. When DJ had asked if Daniel loved Jack… there had been no answer. Only silence. Jack would give a fair chunk of his soul right then to know what Daniel’s answer was. 

His hand just happened to be braced on the park bench, a micron from Daniel’s. Just the slightest flex of his fingers and he could touch… So he did.

Just the slightest flex, and Daniel withdrew. And neither of them gave any sign that anything significant may just have happened between them. Maybe Daniel hadn’t even been aware, Jack thought hopefully, fooling himself and knowing it. But Daniel did, often, have trouble finding his way into the same state as a clue.

Daniel held his breath. And Jack moved away, standing, turning to watch for the van. And he breathed. Very carefully. If that had been an overture of some kind… he wasn’t sure he was ready. He had a lot to think about. The past, the splintered present… how much of his feeling for Jack was a sick fixation with beating himself up over something that had happened thirty years ago? And how much of Jack’s feeling for him might not have anything to do with him at all, but… What the hell had gone on between Jack and DJ? Dead, shot-through-the-gut DJ? 

Damn, but he did not need the added complication of alternate versions of himself messing up his non-existent love-life. He could complicate a simple biological reaction just fine all on his own, thank you very much. 

Sam parked the van in front of them, and opened the side doors so they could load Daniel inside. 

“Come on, big fella,” Jack said. When he took Daniel’s arm to hoist him to his feet, it was friend Jack, superior officer Jack, slightly-pissed and over-protective Jack, just-the-facts Jack, holding him with a firm, bracing hand. “Doc Fraiser’s going to want to take a look at you.”

Daniel sighed in resignation. “Not another sponge bath.”

“Another what?”

“She may even wish to take your temperature,” Teal’c warned gravely.

“What?” Jack asked. “Am I missing something here?”

Daniel and Teal’c glanced at each other. “Apparently, Jack, you’ve been missing the preferential treatment some of us get. I wonder why? Oh well. It’s been a hell of a day. Please, guys. Take me home.”

Å


End file.
